


The Hurricane

by Skittles_and_Secrets



Series: The Hurricane [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Divorce, Fake Science Made Up by a High School Junior, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Post-Squip Jeremy Heere, Post-Squip Rich Goranski, mature language, mild descriptions of gore, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2020-08-23 08:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20239705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skittles_and_Secrets/pseuds/Skittles_and_Secrets
Summary: In the 8th grade, Michael decided to become a Superhero. Now known as the Hurricane, he runs around New Jersey and New York city fighting other "Enhanced." He hasn't lost a fight yet, but the villains are getting more powerful, and closer to home. As the stakes get higher, Michael just hopes that he can balance new relationships, a secret identity, and the responsibilities of each.Epilogue up now!





	1. Chapter 1

I ignored the thunder from the storm outside and tried to concentrate on finishing my calculus. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and this storm had not been on the radar this morning. That had made me suspicious. But my homework was more important than some unexpected weather. If it was a problem, I would know once I turned my phone back on. My homework was almost done, I just needed to finish the last step on one problem.

As I tucked the paper away in my bag, a particularly loud peel of thunder shook the house. I grabbed my phone and checked the local news station's Instagram. The first post was a headline that read: “freak severe pop-up storm causing thousands in damage to office buildings and the local mall.” and the caption said, “check the link in our bio for updates and the radar.” Christine and Jeremy were on a date at the mall today, so I clicked the link to see what was happening.

There were blurry pictures of a telephone pole crashed through the main entrance to the mall, and a massive tree blocking the entrance road to the mall. It looked like no first responders could get through. I glanced at my bag. My suit was right there. I could run to the mall and get there in 10, save all those people. 

The only problem would be that this wasn’t officially an Enhanced threat. Most people didn’t mind being saved from a supervillain by a superhero. In all fairness, most people didn’t mind being saved from a non-super villain either. but the police weren't most people. The police didn’t like when I helped when they could have instead, but right now, the police couldn’t help. I pulled my super suit out of my bag, put it on, and headed towards the mall.

\---------------------------

I’ve had some of my powers since birth. Within the first year of my life, my parents discovered that I healed much faster than average. By the time I was 2, I was in a kindergarten class. Although part of this was that I was born the day before the cutoff for our school district.

My first real powers started to appear in the summer before the 7th grade, back when my father still had custody of me after the divorce. I had said while watching either The Avengers or Captain America, that Chris Evans was hot. He then assumed that I was gay and sent me to a two-week conversion therapy program. The premise was that they would show us images that we would either have a straight or a gay reaction to. If we had a gay reaction they would shock us (at least I think that's what it was, homophobic people are weird). As traumatic as that was, it could have been worse, because I never felt the shocks as painful.

I felt the shocks, but they didn’t hurt. Once I realized this, I tried to control the shocks. I tried to push the electricity back to the person holding whatever they used to shock us. I couldn’t do it for the first couple of days, but by the time I left, I didn't even need the device to shock someone. Not to mention, the whole thing didn’t work. I was still gay and I still thought Chris Evan was hot (although I’m pretty sure most straight guys do too).

After I got home, I emailed my mom and told her what had happened. This was exactly the information her attorney needed to get my mom full custody of me. So I’ve been living with her and her girlfriend ever since.

My next power showed up over spring break in the eighth grade. My mom’s girlfriend took us to Florida where her brother lived. My uncle and his wife were nice, but their children were hell. I couldn’t blame them, the eldest of them, twins, were in the eighth grade too. But I was three years younger than them.

One day while we were swimming in their pool, the twins, decided that they were sick of my crap. They held me underwater for several minutes, and since I had almost no muscle at the time, I couldn’t break their grip. I struggled not to take a breath, but when I finally gave in, I found I could breathe. At that point I relaxed, knowing that one of my moms would come to check on us soon.

It was about 10 minutes since they had first, started to hold me under when their parents came out. Everyone was pissed at the twins and made sure I was ok. My mom’s girlfriend (my mamá) took me to the hospital, as she had seen a lot of “dry drownings” as a nurse. I was fine, of course, but grateful that I had an excuse to avoid my cousins for the rest of the trip.

When we got back home, I started to wonder if I could control water like I could control electricity. It took a couple of weeks and many spilled cups of water, but I could control the movement of water. (after frozen came out, I had tried to control the temperature of the water, but all I ended up doing was electrifying the water).

After that day, I decided to do something with my powers. I made my mom take me to get some supplies and started making a suit. I developed a pretty good one. It had sensors all over the suit to tell me some diagnostic information about myself. But they were also used to tell the force of enemies punches, or the heat of an explosion. I also put in lenses in the mask that worked as glasses and had a screen in them so I could see information during a fight, instead of after it. I’ve added more features to it through the years, as I’ve had to make more suits as I’ve grown. But it's still pretty much the same suit my mothers helped me build in the eighth grade.

The summer after 8th grade was when I first started using my powers. I would go to the city at night. we lived pretty close to Staten Island, so all I had to do was take the bus there and change into my suit on the other side of the ferry. At first, I would stop muggings and small robberies. But one day there was a massive fire in an apartment complex that was right by the river.

It was the most water I had ever tried to move at one time, but I put out the fire. And I also caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of property damage. While everyone in the building was grateful, the city was not. New York told me not to “help” in their city anymore, so I focused on New Jersey more for the time being.

Several weeks later, there was an even bigger fire in the center of the city, while we were visiting for a school trip. The cause of both of these was an Enhanced man who could shoot fire out of his hands, nicknamed the Pyro.

I helped the city subdue him and didn’t cause much damage to anything more than a couple of trees. The mayor was grateful and helped get an agreement between the city of New York, the state of New Jersey, and me, that I could use my powers to help people. But only in events when the police can not help. I've broken that agreement several times, but each case was pretty reasonable. After defeating the Pyro, the Hurricane was the hero of New York City and Northeastern New Jersey.

My last power developed early this year. While Jeremy had the SQUIP and couldn’t see me, I felt invisible. After a few days of that feeling, people started to bump into me in the hallways when they could have avoided me. One of my teachers even marked me absent during class. I noticed when I checked the online system at the end of her class and went to have her fix it.

“Excuse me, ma’am? You put me down as absent when I’ve been in your class for the full period”

She wasn’t going to believe that she had missed me and looked like she was going to say I was lying, but I showed her my notes.

“I promise I’ve been here the entire time ma’am”

“I’m sorry, I must not have seen you when I took attendance, I’ll fix it for you, Michael.”

She smiled and I left her class. When I got home later, the event weirded me out. It was as if no one could see me. I understood why Jeremy couldn’t, but for these other people, I had no explanation. I wondered if I was actually invisible, as there was no reason for the entire school to hate me. I looked in the mirror, but I could see myself fine.

Then I took a picture of myself, concentrating on the feeling from when Jeremy turned optic nerve blocking on. When I looked at the picture, I wasn't there. I freaked out. In the past, I’ve always had a traumatic event associated with the powers I developed, but there was no near-death experience with this one. Not to mention, this power I seemed to have no control over. I spent several days trying to control when I went invisible, and I usually could, unless I got very upset.

\--------------------------

I was very upset. I could tell I was phasing in and out of being visible, but I had no way of stopping it. The storm was stationary over the mall and had hurricane-force winds. It was knocking over many trees and blowing out windows on my run to the mall.

From my listening to the police radio that was in my suit, it sounded like it was an Enhanced after all. And this particular Enhanced wanted to kill one person and “everyone they loved”. At this point, the storm was f*cking with the signal of the police radio and I could only catch bits and pieces. But it sounded like they were after Chloe Valentine. The police had determined that she and five of her friends were in the mall.

So not only were my friends in danger, but they had been hanging out without me.

I decided it was best not to think about that as I entered the mall. The main entrance had been f*cked up, but the entrance through the PenneyJC penney was fine. I had no clue who the Enhanced was, as a lot of people hate Chloe, but a very small number of people hated her that much. My best guess was Madeline, and as I passed the food court, I saw that I was correct.

She looked pissed, her hair was a mess and her eyes were glowing. She had brought down the glass roof covering the food court and was wreaking havoc. There were still several dozen people in the food court. I saw Chloe, Brooke, Jenna, and Jake hiding inside the chick-fil-a and I saw Jeremy and Christine hiding under a table. So Rich was the only one who was loyal.

“Hey! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”

I cringed as the cliched words left my mouth. I needed to get her attention, and that seemed to get the job done, but Jesus. I tried to be like Andrew Garfield's spider-man while fighting but usually ended up like Tom Holland’s.

“The Hurricane, I was wondering when you’d show up!”

Now that I was doing more and getting in the news, people knew who I was. And also knew what my powers were, which made things a little more complicated.

“I’ve always wondered, how well would you stand up to an actual hurricane”

The rain picked up and the wind increased. lightning strikes hit the roof, causing the few working lights left to go out. I knew that this would take a lot of energy and that she couldn’t sustain it forever. So I should get people out and wear her down. I also knew that she was inexperienced, and she is creating so much rain that she can’t see very well.

As soon as I felt the rain was heavy enough, I ran and jumped through the chick-fil-a window. I lead my friends and a couple of others through the back door to the loading dock. I grabbed a heavy rock and propped open the door.

“The police are over there,” I said, pointing in what I hoped was the right direction.

I ran back inside. Madeline was just filling the room with more and more rain. The water was about 2 inches deep and rising. She had stopped the lightning strikes. It was probably because they took more energy than rain. But now she didn’t have a way to attack other than the wind.

The rain providing an ideal cover, I helped some more people hop over through the window and get outside. I kept doing this until I noticed the rain starting to lighten up. I could tell that this was exhausting her and that now she’d start being smarter with the way she used her energy.

“Is that all you got? And just FYI hurricanes don’t have lightning”

She looked at me, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

“Who gives a sh*t?”

She focused all her attention on me and started forcing wind and rain at me. The storm outside seemed to have stopped and she was putting all her energy on me.

The remaining spectators started to move towards the door, and most of them made it out. But interrupting their escape, Madeline began attacking with lightning again. This brought down more of the ceiling with a CRASH. She was also dangerously close to electrifying the water. While I’d be fine, the people who hadn’t made it out yet would die. And Jeremy and Christine would be among them.

She hadn’t actually hit the water with her lightning yet but she was getting close. I was freaking out again and had started to lose control of how visible I was. Rather than fighting it, I took a deep breath and let myself go completely invisible. Madeline stopped the assault on me once she realized I wasn’t there anymore. The invisibility was pretty new, so she didn't know what had happened.

“Hiding? What kind of a hero are you?” she laughed, “you may have let Chloe escape, but there are still people in here. I can still get my payback!”

She turned towards the remaining people and stepped on to a table. She seemed to have realized what lightning and rainwater could do together. I stood next to her on the table, unseen. I realized that she had stepped up on the table. Maybe she couldn’t stand the electricity of a lightning strike. I waited. If I timed this right, I could lift the water right as she does her lightning strike.

“Scared? Your hero’s gone and now you're trapped in the perfect spot for me to kill you.”

Of course, she would gloat.

Jeremy wrapped his arms around Christine. Cowering as Madeline raised her arms for her lightning strike. At that moment I concentrated on lifting the water above the people on the ground’s heads and to the right height to submerge Madeline's legs. Her lightning strike hit the water right as I pulled it above Jeremy’s head. There was a ZAP as she electrocuted herself with and passed out. I launched as much of the water as I could out of the building, and hopped off of the table.

Since I was starting to calm down, it was easier to stay visible. I jumped through the window of some shake place and opened their door to the loading dock. Out of breath and exhausted I sort of gestured to the door. Everyone seemed to be ok and followed my instructions without much thought. Everyone except Jeremy. Jeremy stared at him instead of leaving.

“Who are you?”

I looked at him, still out of breath. He stood with his arms crossed like he was expecting a response.

"Did you really think I would answer that?"


	2. Chapter 2

I could barely stay awake long enough to shower once I got home. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was Thursday, so I still had to go to school tomorrow and using my powers to move that much water was exhausting. I rarely have to use my powers constantly during a fight. I had to use them against the Pyro but that was the only fight where it was their powers against mine. Ever since it’s been my mind against their powers.

Since I was the only active Enhanced near New York that the FBI hadn't arrested, I was the only Enhanced who had experience in a fight. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I was a pretty good fighter with my powers after a couple of fights, but that wasn’t how I was gonna win fights. I started working out and took personal defense classes. Over time, I picked up mixed martial arts too. But what made me a real contender in any fight was my running.

I’ve gotten pretty fast by running every day, and being an Enhanced gave me extra stamina. Running took much less energy than my powers and it was twice as effective. I could wear out my opponent and get spectators away from the area. Also, if I was ever completely outmatched in a fight, I could run away and make a plan.

Mom knocked on my door to wake me up. It was 4:30 am. I would normally wake up at 5:00 to go for a run and shower before catching a ride with Jeremy or my mom. She wanted to talk.

“Honey, are you okay?”

I opened the door. Relieved that she only wanted to make sure I wasn’t hurt.

“Yeah I’m fine, mom”

She put her hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes to see if I was lying.

“Well, I'm still gonna have Sofia make sure. Okay?”

“Yeah”

Mamá (Sofia) was a nurse. Every time a fight took serious effort or had sharp objects involved, she would check to make sure I didn’t get injured. Although, at this point, any injuries I had sustained would have healed. She checks me over and I was fine.

“You look fine sweet pea. Make sure you eat more before a fight. Your suit said that your blood pressure looked low, and I bet that was your blood sugar.”

I had passed out a few times when I first got my powers due to low blood glucose. I had then amped up how many carbs were in my diet. But I was also working on equipment that would measure glucose in a fight so that my moms can look at it while I fight.

My moms were my “guy in the chair” my Ned Leeds. If they were free while I was in a fight they would track my vitals during a fight. Sometimes they'd even help me figure out how to defeat particularly clever enemies.

“Thanks, mamá! I’ll eat more next time. I’m gonna go run now. See you later!”

I went back upstairs and changed into my old gym uniform. Students didn’t have to take gym after sophomore year in our county, which was a huge blessing. People would start to question why the quiet kid who sits in the back of the class is so in shape.

I decided to pass the mall on my run to see what the situation was. The mall was completely surrounded by police tape. It looked worse from the outside than it did on the inside. Most of the roof was completely caved in and many of the office buildings around the mall had windows blown out. I slowed down for half a second when a police officer investigating the scene looked at me.

“Keep moving kid! Nothing to see here”

I muttered a “sorry sir” in reply and went back to my run. This was the most damage any supervillain had caused since the Pyro in new york. And this was the closest to me or my friends any supervillain had been. Chloe didn’t consider me a friend, so Madeline would have no reason to come after me. But she still might go after Jeremy. I finished my loop around the mall, deciding to get a slushie at seven eleven when I realized: the FBI wasn't at the crime scene. I hoped that meant that they had incarcerated her. I kept going, getting my slushie and heading home to shower.

I checked my phone. I had no texts from my friends. but that could be because they were hanging out without me and didn’t want me figuring that out.

Then I checked the news station’s Instagram page. The new headline that they had posted was “The Hurricane takes on unknown Enhanced. The police fail to apprehend the suspect after the Hurricane fleas the scene.” I was supposed to leave after defeating Enhanced individuals. I was supposed to allow the police or feds to handle it on their own. It seemed like the news station knew that, and they were holding police accountable, not me. But now I was going to have to go to school with Madeline and sit next to her in homeroom. Without being able to tell anyone that she was the unknown Enhanced.

I sighed, turning on the water. After my shower I texted Jeremy asking for a ride. Once I had finished getting ready I looked at my phone again, He had responded.

JH: no, sorry.

He sometimes gave Rich or other people rides. or his dad didn't want him driving people, so it wasn't that weird for him to say no.

Me: that sucks.

JH: I would but I already promised christine I’d give her a ride. I hope that's ok?

Me: yeah, it’s cool. See you at school!

At this point, I could tell that he didn’t want to talk to me. Christine lived across the street from the school. She never needed a ride. I’d have to ask him about it later.

I grabbed an apple for breakfast and walked to school. Madeline was in two of my classes. Homeroom and Advisory. Advisory was a class at the end of the day every day. Sometimes we would get lessons about bullying, but it was usually a study hall. So I only had to deal with her for an hour without seeming sus.

Totally doable.

I got to school 10 minutes before the bell. My friends weren’t in their usual spot so I decided to go straight to homeroom. Madeline was there before me. Her eyes were red as if she was crying.

“Hey, are you ok?”

It wasn’t the best idea to engage with her immediately, but I felt bad for her. Earlier this year, Chloe had spread a rumor that Madeline was a few months pregnant. When Madeline failed to look pregnant, Chloe spread the rumor that she had gotten rid of the baby.

The funny thing about the northeastern United States is that there are serious pockets of red-necked conservatives, and unfortunately for Madeline, we lived in one of those pockets. There were 10 students that weren’t white at our school and 20 students that weren’t Christian.

But after Chloe spread that rumor, no one was willing to look at Madeline. To make things worse, Madeline's rich grandparents heard it from Madeline’s cousin and took her out of their will. Her own parents had heard it and now refused to pay for college. So I felt bad for her. Still, murdering other humans isn’t a good thing.

“I’m fine,” she sniffled, “I just heard that Chloe and a bunch of her friends were attacked! They were almost killed at the mall, and I was kind of worried that you were there.”

B*tch.

She was trying to tell me that my friends were hanging out without me. She still wanted revenge on Chloe and had assumed that I was the weak link in the group.

“Oh. well thanks for worrying about me, but between you and me, I try to avoid hanging out with Chloe as much as possible.”

She smiled

“So you knew they were there,  _ without you  _ ?”

She’s not even being subtle about it.

“Yeah, I did. Calc homework is more exciting than hanging out with Chloe, even if it’s also with people I like.”

She laughed an over-exaggerated laugh, reaching out and touching my arm

“Oh my god! Your so funny!”

I had wondered about my sexuality for a long time, and for the past couple of months, I assumed I was bi. But at this moment, I knew that I was 100% gay.

I smiled at her, unsure of where to take this conversation when the bell rang and the teacher came in.

Saved by the bell.

The class passed quickly. We watched the morning announcements and then watched a video about what to do if you're ever in the area when an Enhanced attacked. The video included surveillance footage of the Pyro in New York and a few other superheroes in other places. The video had a few main points. 1) Escape if you can, 2) hide if you can’t escape, 3) cooperate if you can’t hide, and 4) listen to the police or a superhero’s instructions if they get inside.

This video was made for kids in LA so the superhero  _ the Weatherman  _ appeared in it. I was the only superhero around New York City, but other places around the world have them too. The Weatherman controlled rain and wind, so he was less powerful than Madeline, but he knew how to use his powers. I studied his tactics when I first learned how to use mine.

The video ended with the police chief of our town making a statement about how we should concern ourselves with our safety first.

The principal then came on the PA system to say how the police are going to be investigating students at the school for their involvement in the attack on the mall. So teachers should expect many of their students to be called out into the hallway. We started to get ready for the next period when Madeline turned to me.

“What’s your next class?”

I didn’t like where this was going, but I’m not the kind of person to ignore someone.

“B/C, out in the calc trailer.”

“Oh my god! I have English in the trailer next door… walk me there?”

Walking her anywhere was the very last thing I wanted to do.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound happy.

She bought it and smiled at me.

The walk to calculus was hell, and since Jeremy was acting weird, I couldn’t trust that I had him to vent to. Madeline reached over and grabbed my hand as soon as we were out of the classroom. every time I shook her off she would grab my hand again. When we got outside she started talking again.

“So I just realized I don’t have your phone number. I should grab it in case I have questions about homework.”

I looked at her, acting confused.

“Homework from homeroom?”

She rolled her eyes, laughing at me. She reached out and punched my shoulder.

“Or you know just questions about, like, things.”

I was silent for all of two seconds before she spoke again

“Just give me your phone number!”

Her being able to contact me or track me whenever she wanted would be bad news for me. I had to think of something

“I don’t have a phone.”

She looked at me, shocked but not deterred. She grabbed my hand again.

“Well, we could go out and get you one today after school!”

I tried to pull away, but she would not loosen her grip.

“I have work today after school.”

I did have work. My mom owned a hair and nail salon, and part of it sold beauty care. So I would stock shelves, help people find things, and work as a cashier. And we got a lot of business too. While our town was mostly white, the surrounding towns were not. Plus, most people (white or not) were uncomfortable if their nail tech was white.

“Well, where do you work? I could stop by?”

We had gotten to the ramp to the Math trailers.

“This is my class. Gotta go, bye!”

I tried to walk away, but she kissed me on the cheek before saying bye back and walking to English. I walked up the ramp and saw Mr. Taylor looking at me through the window. As usual, I was the first one in his class.

“Madeline, really?”

I shook my head. Mr. Taylor was friends with my mom, and he was one of the only teachers whose room I felt comfortable in.

“Literally not at all. I feel violated.”

He laughed at that.

“She tried to sleep with me last year. So I could help her pass geometry.”

I let out a small snort. that sounded like something she'd do.

“I can’t imagine that worked out well for her.”

Mr. Taylor was a good guy and would never take advantage of a student like that. Also, I'm pretty sure he's gay.

“No, she got suspended and an F for the year. That’s why Mrs. Ward started teaching the class. Because we had no female geometry teachers but she wasn’t allowed to have another male teacher.”

“Jesus. Madeline is a complete Psycho.”

“Yeah.”

Other students started to come in, so I took my seat. Jeremy was one of the last students in and there were only a couple of seats left open. One next to me in the back, or the one next to the weird kid, Nick, in the front. He sat next to Nick leaving the seat next to me open for Jenna to sit down in. Between the two classes of B/C calculus, there were only 17 juniors. The rest were all seniors. Jenna, Jeremy, and I were the only ones I knew.

The class went fine. We took notes for most of it and then were set free for the last half hour to do homework. I finished my homework with about 10 minutes left in class and looked at Jenna. She was on her phone so I figured she wouldn’t mind if I talked to her.

“Hey. Are you guys ok?

She looked up, startled.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be?”

It was weird that Jenna was trying to spare my feeling by acting like they hadn't hung out without me. Jeremy must have asked them to not mention it to me.

“Madeline said that you guys were at the mall yesterday. During the attack.”

Her eyes widened. She waited a second before responding.

“Oh… yeah. We were. You're not upset about that. Are you?” She asked, not sounding guilty in the slightest.

“No. I just want to make sure y’all are good.”

I was upset, but I wanted to look like a good friend. Not some creep who's more upset about his friends hanging out without him than them almost dying.

“Ok. yeah, we’re all fine. Thanks for asking!”

She went back to texting. I didn’t mean to see what she was doing but it just sort of happened.

She opened a group chat called “without Michael and Rich.” The group had previously been texting about how pissed “they” were gonna be when they found out. She texted, “guys Michael’s cool. He’s just worried about us. Madeline told him this morning.”

I was starting to get angry, so rather than act angry, I made a group chat between Me and Rich. I named the chat “without Jeremy, Christine, Chloe, Jenna, Brooke, and Jake.” following their original naming scheme.

Me: they have a group chat without us called “without Michael and Rich”

I could tell Rich wasn't shocked or upset about this.

RG: so you did the pettiest thing you could imagine?

Maybe he'd be upset if he had all the information.

Me: They literally didn’t talk to us about almost dying yesterday. Just because they didn’t want us to know they hung out without us

RG: they almost DIED? What?

This was the reaction I was looking for.

Me: they were at the mall. Madeline told me.

RG: y r u talking to madeline?

Me: it was more her talking to me really. She looked upset in homeroom, so asked what was wrog

Me: *wrong

Me: that was a mistake

RG: yeah, clearly

RG: she only told you so that you’d be angry

Did he think I couldn't tell that?

Me: it sort of worked.

RG: she’s been acting weird all english. I think something is up

RG: wait she's coming over here

Me: if she asks, I don’t have a phone

RG: lmao, what!!!

The bell rang as I got his last text. I told him I'd tell him at lunch and headed to my English class before Madeline could find me again. English went by quickly, and soon it was lunch.

Rich was sitting alone at the table when I got there. He looked up at me.

“Why can’t Madeline know you have a phone?”

I told him about how weird she was acting in homeroom and on the walk to calc. I also told him about what Mr. Taylor had told me.

“Holy shit. Really? She’s flirting with you? Aren’t you gay?”

Rich could be a dry texter, but he was easy to talk with in person.

“I wasn’t sure until this morning!”

He laughed at that. Rich and I had become good friends while he was in the hospital. I was one of the first people he told he was Bi. He was the first person, other than Jeremy, that I talked to about my sexuality. He was great, my best friend other than Jeremy. And he was much smarter than I gave him credit for before the SQUIP.

The others showed up soon enough and acted a little awkward around me and rich.

“So Madeline told me during English that you guys were at the mall yesterday. Are you guys ok?”

Rich used the same excuse I did to get them to stop ignoring me, and they seemed to accept it fine. Lunch was okay. Rich and I kept texting each other memes in the “group chat” I had made. Towards the end of lunch rich looked up behind me and his eyes got big.

I turned around.

“Hey Mikey! I thought you said you didn’t have a phone?”

I could hear Rich behind me struggling not to laugh. I had hoped that by sitting by Chloe Madeline wouldn’t come over here, but that didn’t seem to deter her at all.

“Uh…” I froze barely able to think of a good lie, “this is an iPod.”

That wasn't a good lie.

“So you have iMessage?”

Sh*t. I was completely stuck. Jeremy and Jake had stopped their conversation to pay attention. I might be able to lie my way out of this, but it was going to be bad.

“I don’t have an email.”

I turned back around and saw Rich and Jeremy’s faces completely red from trying not to laugh at me.

“Well I can make you one right now,” Madeline said sitting down next to me.

I’m grasping at straws again.

“I’m not allowed to have one until I’m fifteen. And I’m fourteen, so maybe I'm a little young-”

She put her hand on my shoulder as she interrupted me.

“Fourteen? that’s kind of hot.”

I had no way out of this except to explain that I was gay, and did not want to date her. Before I could do that though, Chloe turned around and saw Madeline.

“You're still allowed to go here? After getting pregnant?”

That got Madeline to leave me alone, but not before blowing a kiss to me. At that point, Jeremy, Jake, and Rich lost it.

“Jesus. You told me it was bad but I didn’t think it was that bad!”

I looked at him dead in the eyes, hoping the exhaustion was evident in my face.

“This. Has. Been. All. Morning!”


	3. Chapter 3

After lunch, I had AP Spanish. I’ve been speaking Spanish since I was a kid, so I did fine in that class. Not to mention our teacher was not a native speaker and asked me to help make answer keys for tests and quizzes. 

After Spanish came advisory. It was the only class I had with Jeremy, Jake, and Rich, but it also had Madeline so I’d been dreading it. There was no lesson for today, so it was a study hall. We sat in the back and Madeline was in the front of the room. Chloe and Christine came over from Mr. Reyes’s advisory to be with their boyfriends. Madeline didn’t seem too bothered by Chloe being here, but after a little while, she went to the bathroom.

Ms. Alexander, our teacher, turned on some music and sat at the front of the room, on her phone.

Jeremy stopped talking to Christine for a second to look at me.

"This is an iPod? really?" he asked, holding back his laughter again.

I rolled my eyes

"I'm sorry I'm not a good liar. what was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. I'd tell her the truth."

I laughed and then thought about it.

"I don't want to hurt her feelings!"

He shrugged and then turned back to Christine.

Madeline came running back to the room.

“Ms. Alexander, there’s a fight in the math hallway and no teachers are there to stop it!”

Half the class stood up to go look before Ms. Alexander screamed at us to sit down and then ran off to go help. After she got most of the way down the hallway, about a third of the class went to go look.

Madeline came over to the tables we had been sitting at. She sat on my desk.

“Hey, don't you want to go watch the fight?”

Now was a good time to try out Jeremy's truth method.

“Uh, not really.”

I leaned away from her but she mirrored my movements. She wouldn't get out of my personal space.

“I think you should go and watch the fight, babe.”

She sounded really irritated like she wasn’t making a suggestion. Chloe gave her a look.

“Um… look, Madeline. I’ve tried to be nice today, but I’m not your boyfriend. So, if you could stop doing stuff like that I’d appreciate it.”

Chloe stood up.

“He’s right Madison. If you could leave my friend alone, that’d be great!”

F*ck.

Chloe had to tell Madeline, in the b*tchiest way possible, that we were friends. This won't end well for any of us.

“Fine,” she said, walking away, “then I guess you’ll have to be a part of the collateral, Michael.”

She stepped on to a desk, raising her arms and blowing the door shut. I reached into my bag for my super suit, realizing that I had left it on the floor of my bathroom.

She flicked her wrist and a loud thunderclap filled the room as the power went out.

Jeremy pulled me under the desks as the windows broke and rain started to come in from the outside. The only other time I’d been present at the start of an attack was when the Pyro attacked New York. But then I had my super suit and a chance to slip away from my class. Now I was completely defenseless.

This time Madeline was smarter with her powers. She used the wind to pick up shards of glass from the windows. But she wasn’t hitting anyone with them yet. It’s like she was waiting for someone. I realized she was waiting for me, or the Hurricane. But I was in no position to help. I couldn't turn invisible because then Jeremy would immediately know who I was. But I couldn't just use my powers because it usually took physical motion to make them work.

Usually.

I could try to use my powers without moving. It would be difficult and take much more energy, I would probably pass out. I wrapped my arms around Jeremy’s neck and concentrated on the puddle that had started forming on the floor. I closed my eyes and imagined it forming a wave and pushing her off the desk. When I opened my eyes I saw that I had done nothing more than splash her feet. I had always been worse controlling water than controlling electricity.

Splashing her feet did seem to have gotten her attention though.

“The Hurricane! hiding again, I see. Whatever, now that you’re here, we can start!”

She used the wind to pick up the desks that we were hiding under and started to move the glass shards around too. Jeremy grabbed me and dragged me against a wall, standing in front of me to protect me from the glass in the air.

I thought for a moment. I couldn’t create electricity, because that would give away my identity. And since the power is out, I couldn’t use the building's electricity. But I could control her lightning if she chose to use it. So all I needed to do was aggravate her into using it.

I kept splashing her with water. That didn’t seem to do much except confuse her. I started making the waves bigger. Until it got to the point where the desk she was standing on was wobbling so much she fell over. She looked pissed, but now she was standing in the inch of water she had made. Since I doubted she was looking to get electrocuted again, she wouldn't use lightning now.

I looked around the room. Someone would try to rescue us. or I could escape and turn invisible.

I looked at the door, it was the only hope of someone coming in and it was locked. Madeline hadn't done that when she slammed the door, which meant that someone else in the room had to have done it.

The only people close enough to have locked it were Jake and Chloe. But they seemed too busy with their conversation for either one to have done it.

“Thank god there’s no lightning this time, or we’d all be dead.”

Jake whispered it, like it wasn’t intended for anyone to hear, but Chloe laughed.

“I bet she can’t do it. I bet last time it was an accident and that all this slut can do is make it rain and sleep with geometry teachers.”

She must have seen that I was trying to make her angry, right? No human being can be that sh*tty of a person. It's impossible that someone could be that horrible. right?

It didn't matter, Chloe's "plan" seemed to be working.

Madeline stepped up on to another desk and raised her hands. Time seemed to slow. I stared at the window, ready for the lightning strike to come through. 

I concentrated on the stream of current, trying to bend it before it hits the water. Aiming Madeline and nothing else. As the lightning struck, Madeline aimed several glass shards at Chloe. The shards hitting Chloe as the lightning hit Madeline.

It looked like a scene in a movie. Chloe gasped and fell to the floor at the same time Madeline did. Someone screamed and a whole bunch of people ran over to check on Chloe. 

Most of the half of the class that’d been hiding opened the door to go find Ms. Alexander. Jeremy and I stayed against the wall for a moment, my arms still around his neck.

“Thanks,” I whispered as I let go of him.

For a second, the only sound in the room was Chloe’s labored breathing. Then, a bunch of teachers, administrators, and police officers came running into the room.

We’re all moved outside and many of us had to receive first aid, while Chloe was rushed to the hospital. I felt a little bad for her, but since it seemed like she’d be fine, I felt like she deserved it. Which was a pretty crappy thing for me to think.

I sat down on the curb next to Jeremy. We were mostly fine, but we both had shallow cuts on our arms, his being worse than mine because he was in front of me.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked softly, a concerned look on his face.

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

I was in better shape than he was, so it didn't make much sense for him to be asking.

“You just seemed frozen. Normally you’re the one thinking in an emergency…”

Should I tell him the truth? That would put him in danger. it might make him trust me more but did that outway the risks?

There was no doubt that it didn't.

“I don’t know… It just sort of freaked me out how Madeline was acting all day, and then she turned around and try to kill us. That messed me up.”

He sighed. He could tell that that wasn't the whole truth, but for now, he ignored it.

“I get it. Well not really, but I could understand feeling that way.”

I laughed and rested my head against his shoulder. It felt nice to talk to Jeremy. We were still friends, but after the SQUIP things were slightly different. We weren't as close. We ignored it for a while, but now, in January, I could tell we were both sick of pretending. Maybe it was that he had a girlfriend or that we just had more friends now and we're both busier. But either way, I lived for moments when Jeremy and I acted like we did before the SQUIP.

Christine walked over and sat down next to us. I took my head away from Jeremy's shoulder, deciding that it'd be best if I let them talk. I went over to Jake and Rich to see if they were OK.

"I don't think that's it, Jake," Rich was saying as I walked over, "Michael will have a better theory than that."

Jake shook his head.

"I doubt it," he said, "I think that the Hurricane was someone in our school. Our grade even, who was worried about being recognized. That's why they were invisible the whole time."

Rich shook his head harder.

"they've been a superhero for a long time. if they were in our grade they'd have to have been an eighth-grader when they started. that's too young."

Jake looked like he was going to start arguing his point. So rather than let him convince Rich, I laughed and shared my "Theory."

"I'm with Rich. It was a small room and Madeline had the upper hand, the dude wanted an advantage of his own."

Jake tried to debate with us, but the amount of time I had put into thinking of cover stories paid off. He seemed convinced at the end of our discussion that the Hurricane wasn't a highschooler.

That didn't mean everything was all good though. If Jake could get close to the truth, so could someone else.

but I didn't have time to worry about other people right now. I had to worry about my self first. I had used a lot of energy in that fight and I was starting to feel faint.

The administration had called our parents to come and get us. The rest of the student body was already sent home a few minutes early on the busses.

My mom arrived within 5 minutes, having been home to take me to work with her anyway. I said goodbye to Jake and Rich and got in the passenger seat. As we drove away I caught a glimpse of Christine's face as she spoke with Jeremy. She looked pretty pissed off.


	4. Chapter 4

My mom started asking me questions as soon as we left school.

“What happened? Was it that Madeline girl who attacked? How did you knock her out? Does anyone know you're the Hurricane now? Are you ok? When did you realize you left your suit at home?”

“I’m alright mom, I don’t think anyone realized I was using my powers. I hid behind Jeremy and tried to be as subtle as possible about what I was doing. As far as anyone knows, the Hurricane wasn't in that room at the start of the fight.”

She looked at me, and the bandaids on my arms.

“Your sure you’re ok?”

I peeled back one of the bandaids to check.

“Yeah, the cuts have already healed. I’m fine, just tired.”

I yawned, curling up in my seat. The rest of the ride home passed in relative silence. I got out of the car and almost tripped on the front step, so tired that my vision was blurry and my coordination was off. My mom helped me inside, looking a little concerned. She handed me a juice box.

“Drink this, go shower, and then get some sleep, chiquito.”

she gave me a kiss on the cheek,

“But don’t I have work?”

“I called in, Jayda’s got us both covered.”

I put the straw in the box and stumbled up the stairs. I hoped this would be the last night that I was falling asleep in the shower for a while. When I finished, I barely stayed awake to pull some boxers on, and then passed out in bed.

I got about 3 hours of sleep before the doorbell woke me up. I heard my mom answer the door.

“Hey, Jeremy! Michaels upstairs, probably asleep, but go on up.”

I heard him start coming up the stairs and I rushed to pull on sweatpants and I stuffed my suit into my closet. He opened the door as I was pulling my hoodie over my head.

“Hey, Jer!”

He handed me one of the two slushies he’d been carrying and sat on the bed. Even though the SQUIP had happened two months ago, he hadn’t been to my house since.

“Your room looks different.”

I laughed, hoping my sadness didn't show on my face.

“It’s clean now.”

He gave me a look.

“You rearranged things.”

I shrugged. I'd done it while he had his SQUIP. My room had reminded me too much of him.

“Yeah, a little”

I sat down on the bed next to him. Things got awkward too quickly with him. I felt like it was partially my fault.

I hadn’t really thought about my sexuality much until after Rich came out. But once he did, I started wondering. I had always known I was into guys, but I didn’t know to what extent. For the past two months, I assumed I was bi, but the past few weeks Rich had been helping me determine that I was gay. The whole Madeline mess really confirmed it for me. But what made me realize I was into guys in the first place (other than Chris Evans) was Jeremy. And once I put it into words that I had a crush on him, I was helpless.

I cleared my throat.

“So what’s up dude? Why’d you come over?”

The words came out stiff. It didn't feel natural.

“You seemed out of it at school and I just wanted to make sure you’re really ok.” He scratched his neck as he spoke. He didn't get nervous around me all that often, over twelve years of friendship, it had only happened a handful of times. Still, he had some obvious tells that I'd picked up on.

I laughed a little, starting to feel more comfortable around him. He might act a little different than before the SQUIP. But he was still the same person, and still lied to me just as poorly.

“But no. Why are you here?”

“Um…”

He didn’t expect to be caught. I looked at him expectantly.

“Christine broke up with me and I wanted a distraction.”

I tried not to look too happy. But he pretty much knew that I thought he and Christine weren’t a good couple.

“I’m nothing if not distracting, we can go play video games if you want.”

I stood up, ready to go downstairs to the basement. But he looked up at me.

“Actually I just wanted to talk…. Or more, cuddle.”

I made a surprise “hm” noise. One good thing about post-SQUIP Jer was that he was rarely afraid to ask for what he wants.

“You know, like we used to in elementary school. I don’t really have anyone else to go to for physical affection right now.”

My brain was screaming “this is a bad idea, Michael. Cuddling with your crush is a bad idea. A very BAD idea.” but it was Jeremy’s idea, not mine. So, what harm could it do?

“Yeah, I totally get it!”

For being a super genius, I was pretty stupid sometimes.

I set my slushie on my desk and sat back down next to Jeremy. We sat there awkwardly for a second until Jeremy sat his drink down next to mine and wrapped his arms around me. We ended up in, like, a spooning position. I was on Instagram looking at memes. Jeremy was watching over my shoulder, occasionally giving a small laugh at a funny meme.

I must have dozed off because I woke up to Jeremy responding to a text from my mom. She had asked him a question, so it was fair for him to respond to it. But a little weird because of the position we were in.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at me.

“Sorry, did I wake you up? Your mom asked if I was gonna stay the night so I figured it's ok if I responded.”

“Yeah, it’s cool”

I practically slurred my words. I'd never been that tired before in my life. I rolled over in Jeremy’s arms so that my face was against his chest. I nuzzled against him and closed my eyes again.

“Hey, are you still tired? Go back to sleep, sleepyhead.”

I smiled at the nickname and wrapped my arms around his neck, just like I’d done earlier today. He put my phone down and put one of his hands through my hair. He pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. He said something, but I was too tired to hear it.

It was 2:00 when I woke up again. This time to a clap of thunder. I heard Jeremy whimper softly.

“Jer?”

A loud crack of thunder came from outside. I sat up and turned on the lamp on my bedside table.

“Hey, you’re okay Jer-bear.”

If I'd been attacked by someone who could control lightning and wanted to kill me, I would be scared of thunder. Especially if I didn't have powers. If it had happened twice, I would be absolutely terrified. So Jeremy was handling it well, all things considered.

“I’m sorry. I’m fine now. I just wasn’t expecting thunder”

He blushed a little. I wish he felt more comfortable around me.

“It’s okay, Jer. you don’t have to apologize.”

We were both sitting up now. I reached over and hugged him, whispering reassurance. We stayed that way for a couple of minutes until Jeremy nudged me away.

“Thanks. I didn’t think there was supposed to be a storm tonight.”

I ran my hand through his hand, before speaking in a soft voice.

“I can check the radar if you want?”

He nodded and I pulled my phone out from where he had put it under my pillow. The radar showed the blue and purple mass steadily moving in for the past several hours.

“Just a regular storm, not some crazy Enhanced person.”

He smiled, and then furrowed his eyebrows.

"Aren't storms red and green on radars."

We looked at each other and smiled. After a few seconds, he stood up and opened the curtain, revealing the snowstorm outside.

I was ecstatic. Snow was one of my favorite things in the world, and one of the only things I loved more than snow was thundersnow. Jeremy smiled and sat back down on the bed.

“Thanks for not hating me.”

I widened my eyes and looked at him.

“What?”

“Thanks for not hating me. After the SQUIP. You could’ve hated me, should’ve hated me, honestly, but you didn’t, so thanks.”

Did he believe that I would hate him for that?

“Of course, Jer-bear.”

After the SQUIP, he had seemed so confident, like he always knew what he wanted. But now he seemed so insecure, and scared.

“For real Jer-bear, it’s fine. You're my best friend. I could never hate you. And definitely not because of the SQUIP.”

He still didn't seem convinced.

"but it was more than the SQUIP. I was a sh*tty friend before that all happened. and you had the perfect opportunity to get rid of a sh*tty friend, but you didn't. I don't understand why, but I'm thankful."

I looked into his eyes, thinking for a moment.

"Jeremy. It's all OK. I wasn't a perfect friend before the SQUIP either. I never wanted you to be a good friend, all I wanted was for you to be there. and when it matters, that's what you do."

He smiled.

"Thank you."

We sat there for a while, shuffling back to the position we had woken up in. There was another crack of thunder and Jeremy tightened his arms around me, but he seemed a lot more comfortable now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The things on my to-do list:  
1) fix grammar and spelling errors  
2) improve the writing style (slow down dialogue and improve pacing)  
3) make it only Michael's POV  
3) Flesh out previously flat characters  
4) improve the fight scenes  
5) change the final fight  
6) change certain Enhanced's abilities  
7) increase word count (get out of novella territory and make it a novel)  
8) improve my writing skill in general

I woke up tangled in Jeremy's arms and legs. He was hugging me like a koala, and as cute as it was, I was completely trapped until he woke up. I didn’t mind too much, I could see the still falling snow through the window and I could smell waffles from downstairs. 

Jeremy stirred, pulling himself away from me, muttering a small “sorry”. I rolled out of bed, guessing that Jeremy would probably be a while before he actually woke up. I grabbed our half-empty cups and walked to the kitchen, pouring them down the sink. Looking out the window, I saw how much snow had fallen. 

“Holy sh*t!”

Both my mothers looked up from the waffle iron. 

“Sorry.”

Mamá laughed,

“How’s Jeremy? I hadn’t seen for a while before yesterday.”

“He’s fine, just busy with his girlfriend.”

In the past, I would tell my mothers everything. Lately, it’s been harder to that. I told them that Jeremy and I had had a fight and that we weren’t each others only friends, but I didn’t tell them anything about the SQUIP. No one had believed anyone else when they said anything about it, so I figured my mothers probably would be the same. 

I should probably tell them about the SQUIP. I had been wondering since I heard about it, how would it affect an Enhanced person. At this point, I thought that it probably wasn’t a completely autonomous AI and that someone was giving it goals to achieve. If that person could gain access to an Enhanced, they could control them.

“Oh! How’s that relationship going?”

“Actually, they broke up.”

The waffle iron beeped and they turned their attention back to it. I opened the refrigerator to get juice. I hadn’t eaten much yesterday and was feeling the consequences now. Mamá said something about how she had to go to work, but she would be home in time for their date. I didn’t really hear because I had stopped listening to watch the snow.

It was sort of childish, my obsession with snow. I hated the cold, but not snow. I think I love it so much because I get overwhelmed easily, and snow was quiet, soft, and plain white. Boring. Snow was boring by nature. Sure, playing in the snow or getting out of school was fun, but snow was simple. My life had been nothing but complicated lately, and the simplicity of snow was refreshing. 

I was shaken out of my thoughts by Jeremy coming downstairs. 

“Wow, there’s like 3 feet of snow outside!”

“Michael said the same thing.”

“Effectively,” I grunted, taking a sip of my juice. 

My mom laughed. 

“Eat some of these waffles, we don’t want them to go to waste.”

My mom handed Jeremy a plate and my mamá kissed me on the cheek before both of them headed out to their car. Jeremy and I ate in comfortable silence, the only noise being the meteorologist on TV and the wind outside. 

“You feeling better?”

Those were the most popular words of the past 24 hours it seemed. I had said and heard them more times than I could count. I felt bad for asking them again, but I needed to be sure.

“Not really, but I’m getting there.”

I smiled and opened my mouth to say something when Jeremy’s phone rang.

“It’s my dad, I should probably answer.”

He walked to the other room. I stood up and started washing the dishes. I was glad that Jeremy and I had other friends now, but I felt like I was often lower priority to Jeremy than the others. We still hung out, but this was the first time Jeremy had sought me out since the SQUIP, and even when we did hang out, he was always getting distracted by texts and calls from people. Obviously I couldn’t blame him for talking to his dad, but he was always acting like this. 

“Hey, I gotta go home. My dad needs me. Sorry”

Jeremy poked his head in. 

“It’s chi-cool.”

I caught myself before saying chill. When talking to Rich in the hospital, he had mentioned that hearing the words chill freaked him out. He said it had to do with the SQUIP, but didn’t elaborate past that. So I played it safe with that word around anyone who had a SQUIP. 

I walked Jeremy to the door. He pulled his shoes on and took a step towards the door, but turned around and pulled me into a hug. 

“Thanks again.”

I nodded into the hug. As nice as cuddling last night was, a deliberate hug while we were both fully awake felt amazing. 

“I love you,” he whispered very quietly as he pulled away.

I was frozen for half a second. Before this year, we would say I love you all the time. Sometime this summer we had stopped. I couldn’t figure out why he stopped, but after I said it to him a couple times and he didn’t respond, I decided not to bother. Hearing him say it again felt better than the hug did. 

By the time I had processed what had happened, he was most of the way out the door. 

“Love you too, Jer!”

I stuttered a little on the words, but he smiled as he closed the door behind him.

As soon as he was down my driveway, I walked back to the kitchen to finish the dished. After that, I went to go shovel the driveway. My moms parked on the street, so we normally started shoveling after the sun was up.

It didn't take all that long to shovel the driveway, considering how much snow had fallen. But the snow was bulky, dry snow. The kind that gets your hope for the school being canceled for the next week but only achieves a two-hour delay. Or nothing since it decided to fall on a Friday night.

I checked the fridge and the pantry for food. We were low on pretty much everything, and it was my responsibility to grocery shop on weekends.

It could be good for me to leave the house. I could visit the mall and see what was happening with the rebuilding.

I grabbed my camera, my backpack, and a few reusable grocery bags and started walking to the mall.

The path through the woods was quiet. The thick layer of trees overhead had caught most of the snow. I passed a small pond and saw that a thick layer of ice had covered the top. With the sun up and the snow insulating the forest, it was warm. So for there to be solid ice on the pond was weird. I took a photograph and kept walking.

When I got to the mall, I could see more police tape than had been there yesterday. There was also FBI presence, which was relieving. I turned invisible and began approaching the building.

As I drew closer, I could hear one officer say to another "no one should go inside. We have all the information we need and the roof will cave any minute."

The other officer nodded and gave an order into his walkie talkie. If there were no investigators inside, then I could really explore. I wanted to see what Madeline could actually do with her powers.

Most of the building was fine. A little outdated but structurally sound. The food court was about to collapse, like the police officer had said, but the rest of the building seemed safe. I needed to see the food court though, so I’d have to be careful.

Water damage had destroyed most of the floor and the lightning strike had blown the lights out of the ceiling. Glass, ice, and trash covered the floor, or what remained of it. Many of the restaurant windows were ruined beyond what I saw in the fight. I walked around taking pictures until I heard the building start to groan. The roof was going to cave in soon.

I snapped a few more photos before starting to leave the area. As I walked through the door I noticed a large sheet of ice that hadn’t been there when I walked. It as well above freezing now and the ice wasn’t melting, just like the ice at the pond. I took a photo and left the building. I wasn’t going to solve that mystery today.

The grocery store was crowded. It was the first big snowstorm of the season, so people were stocking up for the next ones. I grabbed some vegetables for dinner for the next few days, as wells as snacks and other high-calorie foods for me. After grabbing some ice cream for my moms, I checked out and began to walk home.

When I passed the pond again, I took another photo. It was still as frozen as it had been earlier, but now it was in direct sunlight. I didn’t have time to worry about all this ice though. I had homework to do.

Rich came over to get tutored in Spanish. After a little while, we gave up on school and decided to just talk.

“Jake is still certain the Hurricane is someone in our grade. He was talking to me last night about it. He thinks it was Jason.”

I laughed.

“Jason?”

Rich started nodding.

“Uh-huh. Jason. The dumbest person I have ever met. Not to mention he’s too short to be the Hurricane. The Hurricane is more your height.”

I nodded. He was getting closer, and if he and Jake spent any time thinking about it they could probably figure it out. But that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. It would put them in danger, but they wouldn’t tell anyone. That didn’t mean I would tell them though. It wasn’t worth them getting hurt.

“A little taller I think, but yeah.”

He rolled his eyes. He clearly didn’t think I was the Hurricane.

“Maybe. But Jake was certain it was someone like 5 inches shorter. Jason is even shorter than I am, so there’s no way he’s the Hurricane.”

I opened my mouth to reply but Rich was on his phone. He was texting someone in the middle of our conversation.

“Who the hell are you texting and why are they more important than me?”

I put my hands on my hips and attempted to impersonate an angry housewife.

He laughed.

“It’s Jake.”

I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

“You and Jake have been awfully close lately?" I asked, poking him. We’d hung out a whole bunch right after he got out of the hospital and he’d told me he had a crush on Jake.

“Oh shut up.” He rolled his eyes. “Chloe broke up with him yesterday and he just needs someone to talk to about it. He wants me to hang out with him.”

“Oh? He’s newly single and wants to talk to you?”

He slapped my arm.

“It’s not like that. He’s still straight.” He stood and stretched as he spoke.

“I’m pretty sure Jake has never been straight, but go off I guess. I’ll see you later nerd," I said, following him to the front door.

He laughed at me and left. I started walking back to my room when I noticed Jeremy’s blue cardigan hanging up on the coat rack. He must have left it here. I sent him a text about it and was about the set my phone down when I got an alert from Twitter.

“Breaking: Enhanced robbery in Pennsylvania! US Army called in!”

I ran over to my TV and turned it on. a plant controlling Enhanced was robbing a garden store in Philadelphia. From the shaky camera in the helicopter, I could see a massive vine of poison ivy on the roof and wrapped around the building. As the helicopter got closer, I saw that the vine had many people tangled in it, keeping them from escaping.

The army arrived and then the camera cut out, returning to the anchors in the studio.

Philadelphia was an hour and a half away from where lived, so too far for me to help, but close enough to worry me. After about 10 minutes, the footage went back to the store. The army was cutting people down from the vine. The reporter said that the Enhanced individual had escaped, taking a shipment of dangerous plants with them.

“These plants aren’t poisonous enough to kill anyone, but they can cause painful skin reactions that are hard to get rid of. So, if you folks see any suspicious-looking person with a bunch of plants that have small white flowers or bunches of three leaves, call the cops.”

The news cut to a different segment and I groaned. This was going to make my job a lot harder.


	6. Chapter 6

My moms got home right after sundown. They had both had slow days, with all the snow, so they had heard the news about the robbery in Philadelphia, and they were worried about me because of it.

“We can cancel our date and stay home if you like?” My mom offered.

I shook my head at them. They deserved a date.

“I’m fine, it was ninety minutes away. It didn’t affect me in any way," I said, giving her a look to tell her I wasn't a baby.

“I know, mijo. I just want you to be comfortable.”

I rolled my eyes. She was more worried than I was.

“Mom, I’m fine. Don’t be late for y’all’s date.”

They left me 20 dollars for pizza and went to some semi-fancy restaurant. Once I got my pizza, I looked more into the Enhanced. The unknown person had stolen a shipment that contained poisonous plants that were removed from a nearby park. These plants could only cause uncomfortable rashes unless someone was really allergic. But, I didn’t know how that would be changed by the Enhanced’s use of them. I found a page that had pictures and descriptions of the symptoms of the plants the news story said. The weird thing was, there was only a limited description of what the Enhanced had stolen. Only two plants were listed as stolen, even though he used another plant in the fight.

I tried to find the interview that they had done live with one of the workers, but it wasn’t online anywhere. I eventually found a video from a spectator that was near the interview as it was happening. The quality was atrocious but I could make out most of what the employee was saying.

“This dude comes in, and goes straight to where we had a couple of venus fly traps, he put them in his cart. We have a couple of plants in, like, the nightshade family for sale, and he picked those up too. He grabbed a small hedge thing and a bunch of seeds for stuff. Then, he grabbed a bag of fertilizer started pushing his cart towards the employee exit to the loading dock. I tried to stop him, but that was when he took a clump of something from his pocket, and then the whole room was surrounded by a vine. In a second, there was poison ivy everywhere.”

I paused the video. I doubted that the man was gonna say much more about what plants he had gotten. Venus flytraps would be dangerous if they were as big as the poison ivy vine had been. The hedges were probably just to act as a fence to prevent people from escaping. He'd grabbed a lot more, but now I had some idea of how much more. He easily held fifty people hostage with a vine of poison ivy. I could only imagine what he could do with all those plants.

What really interested me was the seeds. There were a lot of vegetable seeds for sale at this place, but also several types of flowers, some of which were toxic. He could poison people or use vegetables as weapons. depending on what this dude had grabbed, he would be very dangerous.

If I had to fight this guy, I could just zap the plants to kill them and let him wear himself out. Making any plants the size of that vine had to be taxing and this guy didn't seem like he'd built up his stamina.

Deciding that it wasn’t worth worrying about, I turned on the discovery channel. There was an episode of some survival show, and then some documentary about Monkeys. The dude in the survival show was in some forest in Maine for a few days. He was looking for food when he turned the camera onto some tree.

“At the base of this tree, we can see some poison ivy. You can tell it’s poison ivy because of how the leaves are grouped in threes. As the old saying goes ‘leaves of three, leave it be!’ But poison ivy isn’t the only Toxicodendron, around though. This tree is poison sumac. You can tell by the tiny white berries and the double row of leaves. In late spring and summer, these trees have the green color of the trees around them, but in autumn they turn red. If the berries on the tree are red, then it’s probably a non-poisonous sumac tree.”

The show ended with him being picked up by a helicopter and then the documentary played.

I grabbed my suit from upstairs. I wasn't allergic to the _ Toxicodendrons _unlike 75 percent of the population. but that didn't mean I wanted to touch them. I had a couple of places where my skin was showing from me growing out of my suit. I was going to need to make a new suit anyway, but I wanted something that would work in the meantime.

After I put my suit back away in my bookbag, I sat on my couch and thought. This was a well thought out and planned attack. He could be working with others, so I'd have to keep that in mind. But regardless of how much help he had, he was smart, and if I had to fight this guy it would be tough to win.

I got a notification. It was information about what fertilizers the enhanced had stolen. The army had needed to do a complete search of the store and interview all witnesses before any information could be officially released to the public. 

It was getting late, and my moms wouldn’t be home for a while. I decided to go to sleep. I would be able to think better in the morning anyway.

Mamá woke me up at around 10.

“Buenos dias, mijo. I wanted to talk to you. Do you want to get breakfast out?”

I said "yes, of course," and started to get ready. Mamá and I would often get breakfast out on weekends, but her asking to talk was weird. We would talk anyway, so it had to be serious if she specifically mentioned it. It was probably fine, maybe even good news, but I prepared myself for the worst anyway.

We didn’t go to the usual diner. instead, she drove into the city, which was really weird and a long way to go for just breakfast. We got out of the car and she handed her keys to a valet guy.

“I heard this place has an amazing brunch. So... I thought we could try it out,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.

I nodded and gave her a smile.

“Sounds good.”

The restaurant was really good, it was a bistro in the lobby of a hotel. The food was reasonably priced too. We talked about a bunch of things, but none of them seemed important enough to have been mentioned specifically.

I took a deep breath, hoping that my mother was going to give me good news instead of saying that she and my mom were breaking up or something.

“Mamá, what did you want to talk to me about?”

She looked up from her plate, taking a long deep breath before meeting my eyes.

“Right. I have an appointment at Tiffany’s down the street for 1 today. I was going to buy your mother an engagement ring, but I wanted to ask for your permission first,” She said with an uneasy smile.

I gasped and grinned like a little kid.

“Of course you have my permission, mamá!”

I was excited and relieved. They were practically already married, but I think they both wanted an actual wedding.

“I don’t think I’m dressed for Tiffany’s, though. Aren’t they fancy?”

I think Tiffany’s is an expensive jewelry brand. But I don’t wear jewelry so I have no clue.

“You have clothes on. That’s about the only dress code they have for customers.”

We both laughed and finished our meal. It was about 12:30 when we finished so we walked towards the store. The store was on 57th and 5th and we were on 52nd and 7th, so it was a bit of a walk. When we got to the store a man in a suit approached us.

“Do you two need any help today?”

He smiled at us but was standing just a little to close for comfort. He probably thought we were there to try and steal something.

“We have an appointment," Mamá replied, her tone a touch colder than her usual.

He nodded with understanding and checked us into their system before called another man over. The first man gave us a sheepish smile before going back to standing near the door.

The other man approached us.

"You must be Sofia," He said, shaking her hand, "I"m George and I'll be helping you pick out and size your ring."

For such an exciting thing it was pretty uneventful. We looked at some rings that were my mom’s size and compared some to my skin tone. Eventually, we found one that we knew mom would love. It was only 7 thousand, which is reasonable for an engagement ring. We set up a payment plan and left.

We got back home around 4, way before my mom would get home, and mamá went upstairs to hide the ring in a drawer. She made dinner reservations at mom’s favorite restaurant for two weeks from now and that was it. Pretty boring and simple.


	7. Chapter 7

Everyone was back to normal on Monday. Classes near where the attack was were moved to the library so that they could fix the window. Other than that, no one seemed to do anything about a student attacking other students in school. The administration’s lack of interest let everyone do what they loved to do, gossip. 

The 8 of us were the main focus for most of it. Chloe was in the hospital for a few more days, so there was no one besides Jenna to control the spread of rumors. We were all getting some serious sh*t. Of course, Jake and Chloe's break up was the big piece of gossip. I didn't care, so I only knew that they had broken up on Friday. Other people had seen Chloe's entire fourteen-part Snapchat story rant about how Jake was cheating on her. The football team responded by posting pictures of Chloe making out with random guys. Everyone was waiting for Chloe's retaliation.

Jeremy and Christine’s break up was the next biggest thing people talked about. Neither one of them seemed all that upset about it, which made it much more interesting to people. I heard people say that Christine broke up with him because she was in love with Madeline, or that Jeremy was in love with Madeline, or that Jeremy was gay. The most popular reason for their break up was that Jeremy was cheating on her, with me. I had at least six people ask me about it before I even got to homeroom. 

Another thing people wanted to talk about was the fight on Friday. They said that Madeline was trying to kill him and that he used Chloe as a human shield, or that he kept harassing Madeline. According to the word on the street, Rich had escaped before the fight started with Brooke and Jenna, Christine had almost died during the fight, Jake tried to kill Chloe multiple times, Jeremy and I started dating over the weekend, and the Hurricane had to be one of us because no one saw him come in through the window. 

That was the only bit of gossip I was interested in. People really liked the idea that Jake was the Hurricane, but people believed almost all of us could be it. Almost all because absolutely no one thought I could be any kind of superhero. They said I was too quiet, too small, didn’t have enough muscle, and was too mean a person to be an Enhanced. The last one got on my nerves, but it was probably best not to say anything in case someone actually guessed the truth. 

By the time I sat down at lunch, I was exhausted. We had a sub in physics, so the entire class just talked the whole time. In APUSH we just worked on our midterm project, which was a group project, so I had to answer questions from my groupmates the entire time. Not like they would do the work anyway. And between the classroom and the cafeteria, I got stopped by 9 different people asking if Jeremy and I were dating. So when Jenna sat down, I was pissed.

“Did you f*cking start this?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Everyone believes it. They wouldn’t do that unless it came from you.”

“I might have helped it along.”

She smiled, coyly. 

I sighed. 

Sometimes Jeremy’s friends could be great. They were fiercely loyal to each other. They chose to be friends with Rich after the SQUIP, because Rich was their friend. I was not their friend. I was friends with Rich and Jeremy. That let me sit at their table. I was acquaintances with them and nothing more. I had never really played into Chloe’s game of people acting the way she wanted them to, so she had always disliked me for that. I never intentionally disrespected her, but I wasn’t kneeling at her feet everywhere she went like Jake was. 

This could sometimes make me public enemy number one in her, and her friends' eyes. There were only a few people she liked less than me. One was Madeline, probably because she would date Jake when Chloe and Jake broke up. Another was Dustin Kropp, this was probably because he sold her “pot” that was actually oregano freshman year. Weirdly enough, Chloe didn’t like Jenna very much either. Jenna was always kissing up to Chloe and never spreading negative gossip about her, but Chloe still treated her like crap. But Jenna was useful, and it would be hard to have Jenna spread negative gossip about Jenna. So Jenna was still Chloe’s friend, even if she didn’t like her very much. 

Jeremy shook me out of my head by sitting down next to me. The rest of the table had filled in and Jenna was talking to Brook and Christine. Rich was looking at me, a little concerned.

“You alright?”

“Yeah.”

He pulled out his phone and started typing.

RG: no ur not

Me: I swear. I’m fine

RG: ur not. ill fukin ask jermy

Me: I’m fine

“Jeremy,” Rich started, “do you think Michael’s actually OK?”

“Yeah, probably.”

I looked at him. His eyes were red and his shoulders were hunched. He clearly did not listen to a word Rich said.

RG: ur not fine, but he’s less fine

Me: leave him alone. He’s probably tired of all the gossip

RG: it happens to all of us, he’ll get over it

Me: it can get bad, especially if Jenna is spreading it

Me: just look at Madeline

RG: jeremy is pretty different than mads was. 

I thought about that for a moment. Were we much different than Madeline was? I was an Enhanced like she was, but I fought against her and she tried to hurt mostly innocent people. I had been bullied by Chloe, and I thought about using my powers on her, but I never did. Had I had my life ruined by Chloe, it’s hard to say whether I would still be a superhero. 

Jeremy, on the other hand, would never have to make that decision. He had no powers, like 99% of the population. He was never going to be able to kill someone across the room with a storm, or electrocuting them, or drowning them, or strangling them with a plant. He was just gonna have to do it the old fashioned way, which was much less impulsive. 

Rich and Jake started talking about something due for one of their classes and I zoned back out. Was Jeremy upset about the gossip, or was it something else? I know it sounds paranoid, but who can I trust. Was Jeremy an Enhanced and had never told me? I had never told him, so it’d be fair for him to not tell me. Maybe he was the plant pirate and was feeling a little guilty about planning to kill us all. Maybe he was cheating on Christine and that was the real reason they broke up. Maybe he knew I was the hurricane and was angry at me for not telling him. Maybe-

Jeremy grabbed my hand and dragged me away from the table. The bell had rung a couple seconds ago and everyone had started to leave. 

“Come on, both our classes are in the library today.”

He let go of my hand and slipped into the crowd. We sat in the back of the library after signing in. He stilled looked tired and annoyed, but he seemed better. We sat doing homework for a while, but then a few people kept walking back, looking at us. It was obvious what they were doing, and I was getting annoyed. 

“Bathroom?” He whispered.

I nodded. He asked to go and I waited a few minutes before asking to go as well. The teachers didn’t care at all, so I brought my backpack. No one ever used the bathrooms on the first floor, so no one would walk in on us. He was sitting on the counter with the sinks when I walked in. He smiled and pulled me into a hug.

“You OK, Jer?”

“No. I wish that everything I did didn’t immediately become gossip. I wish I had time to process things before other people processed them for me.”

“I get that. I feel like I’m being watched by everyone all the time. I sort of miss being a loser.” 

“Yeah.”

The bell rang and we went back to the library for Advisory. 

On Tuesday, Jeremy and I ate lunch in the library. We did this before the SQUIP, but it felt nice for it to be a choice instead of a necessity. Our classes were both in the library again, so it was extra convenient.

Rich and Jake both gave us a concerned look when they came in for advisory.

"You guys alright?" Rich asked as he sat down, "You weren't at lunch."

Jeremy and I shared a quick look. We weren't, but Rich didn't need to worry about us.

"We're fine. I had a headache so we decided to sit in the library. It's quieter here." Jeremy smiled at them as he spoke.

Rich still seemed suspicious, but Jake accepted it moved on. Ms. Alexander came out of the library office and handed out our activity for the day, preventing Rich from pressing it further.

We sat in the library again on Wednesday. Chloe had come back that morning and so the rumours about her stopped, but everyone in the school thought Jeremy and I were dating. It was irritating, but it was a lot easier to ignore when I wasn't interacting with Jenna or Chloe.

On Thursday, someone had started a rumour that Rich was the person who stole the plants in Philidelphia. There wasn't much merit behind it, but enough people had said something about it to him that he was upset. His eyes were red when I passed him and Brooke in the hall before lunch.

"Come on," I said, gently grabbing his hand.

I led him and Brooke to the library, where Jeremy was waiting. Once he saw that Rich was upset, he just accepted it and sat down like normal.

Friday at lunch we all sat there and talked. I hadn't hung out with Brooke when Chloe wasn't around, but she was fun.

"So we had set up the pendulum. and I know I did it right because I followed the instructions," Brooke said, describing the lab that she and Dustin had done in Physics. "He's holding the softball in front of his face. We were supposed to drop it and it wouldn't hit us when it swang back, but he pushed it forward. and it wasn't a casual push, he _launched_ it. So it comes flying back and knocks him out. Just like that. He got a bloody nose, so the teacher made me walk him down to the clinic"

I laughed. Brooke had seemed in way too good of a mood when she showed up to lunch. But Dustin being embarrassed in front of their entire Physics class put me in a good mood too.

"Was he not paying attention? How did he miss the entire purpose of the lab?" Jeremy asked, laughing as he spoke.

Brooke started to reply when Jake came over to us.

"You don't mind if I sit here, right?" He scratched his arm and bit his lip.

Rich smiled and patted the ground next to him.

"You're good."

Rich had a little bit of red on his cheeks. I was tempted to give him a look, but I figured that he'd die if I did that to him.

We continued our conversation and Jake stayed mostly silent. Still, just the fact that he sat with us was enough to piss Chloe off and get people to leave us alone. As I was walking through the forest to get home, She and Jenna followed me. It was creepy as hell, but nothing happened so I just ignored it. 

They followed me until I got to the street in my neighborhood. They hadn't known where I lived before, but the fact that they did now left a bad taste in my mouth.

But it wasn't like they could do something bad with that information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited the old chapters so that more things are proper nouns. I started working on another fic, so I didn't focus solely on this one today. I don't know if I'll upload this weekend, it's sort of an Iffy schedule. also, planning a good chapter for the next upload, so enjoy the semi-filler chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

Surprisingly, it wasn't Chloe that ruined my newly found good mood. It was an actual villian. The truck that had been stolen with the plants was found crashed on the side of a small road about 15 miles south of Middleborough. Only, the plants weren’t in it. 15 miles was way to close to comfort. I had this feeling in the back of my mind that he knew where I lived. Maybe not who I was, but the area that I lived in.

On Wednesday morning the principal announced that we would be practicing a new drill. It was just like a lockdown drill, but a different alarm would play over the PA system, letting us know that it was an Enhanced and not a shooter. We practiced in our homeroom class, making our second period 30 minutes shorter in the process. In advisory (which was in the library), Ms. Alexander projected the words “Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, Poison Sumac, Giant Hogweed, and Cow Parsnip.”

“Can anyone tell me what these 5 plants have in common?”

A purposefully annoying kid, Liam, raised his hand. 

“They all have poison in their name?”

Ms. Alexander ignored him. Another kid raised her hand.

“The plant guy has them?”

“Yes but that's not what I’m looking for.”

This went on for a while. Certain people had some very wild guesses and no one had anything resembling a scientific answer. I was shocked. I guess I was the only one who had done any research into this guy last week. Eventually, Dustin Kropp came up with the right answer. 

“They’re all poisonous to the touch.”

Dustin was far from an ‘A’ student and wasn’t someone to freak out about an enhanced attack, so it was weird that he knew. But he'd probably been in boy scouts or something. 

The rest of the lesson was about identifying these plants and what the symptoms and treatments after exposure were. I paid attention in case I had to administer first aid, but I was the only one.

Jeremy gave me a ride home, which he hadn’t done in a while. It wasn’t very far so I usually didn’t mind walking after school, but it had started to rain, so Jeremy offered. The first few minutes getting out of the parking lot were silent, but once we got out of the way of the buses, we started to talk.

“I feel like I haven’t talked to you alone since last Wednesday.”

We had, but only for very short periods of time.

“Yeah.”

“So um… What's going on in your life?”

He dragged the "Um..." out unnecessarily long. It was like he was struggling to think of something to say.

“Mamá is going to propose to mom next Friday, they have a date.”

“Cool.”

As I’ve stated before, a lot of our conversations are really awkward.

I sighed.

"I mean," He said, sensing my disappointment, "That's fantastic. They're practically married already but they must be excited."

I smiled. He was trying. We never had to try before in our relationship. It hurt that we had to. At least we were still friends.

"They will be." I laughed.

"Right. She hasn't proposed yet." He was laughing now too.

We enjoyed the moment for a while as our laughter faded to silence.

“So," he started, "dad has to work late on Friday and I don’t want to have to be home alone with all that's happening in the news, so I was wondering if you could come over?”

I smiled. We didn't normally have to invite each other over, but the fact that he wanted me to come over at all felt good.

“That’d be great.”

He pulled into my driveway.

“See you tomorrow, Mikey.”

“See you!”

I hopped out and ran inside.

I had planned on going to the site of the crash to see if I could find any lead on this guy's Identity, but the rain would have washed away any footprints, by now. Plus, most of the plants he stole grew normally in this area.

The most frustrating part about being a superhero was that things happened while you had other things to do. 

One thing that was weird was that the school had only prepped us on the 5 plants that were mentioned on the news. They didn’t discuss anything about the rest of the plants that the guy in the interview had mentioned. I tried to find the video I watched the other day, but it was gone. It didn’t make sense for the police to want to hide that knowledge from people, as it would only make their job harder. 

The only thing that made sense was that this dude was working with someone else. It would be hard to hide all the plants in one place -Imagine if your weird neighbor suddenly had a whole bunch of poisonous plants in his yard- so he was probably housing them with multiple people. And someone pretty tech-savvy and on top of things was probably taking down videos off of youtube and other sites, marking them as copyright or hacking accounts. It was even possible that there was a memory controlling Enhanced with him. A few had been seen and all large scale enhanced organizations had someone who could do that. 

My phone buzzed in my hand, pulling me out of my thoughts.

It was the group chat.

BL: does anyone else remember the interview the one worker from the plant store did when they were robbed? 

BL: i cant find it anywhere

Me: I remember it, but I cant find a video

BL: do you remember what plants he mentioned?

Me: Venus Fly Traps, Plants in the Nightshade family (including Tomatoes), a Hedge, seeds for things. Probably other stuff too

JD: how did u remember that?

RG: he totally has photographic memory

Me: that's not a thing

RG: nerd

BL: thx Mike

I hated when people called me Mike, but I didn’t want to start something or have Rich teasing me over it. The only person who calls me Mike is my dad, and he isn’t a good person. 

JH: don't call him mik

JH: it michael

BL: ok jermy

JH: don't @ me brooklin

I put my phone down and got started on homework. I hoped that the Enhanced would wait until after this week to attack. I really wanted to hang out with Jeremy alone on a day where we’re not in school or exhausted. 

I was just finishing when my phone buzzed again.

BL: HOLY SHI*T TURN ON THE NEWS

BL: THE PLANT DUDE ATTACKED A SECURITY GUARD

The only channel running the story was our local FOX news team. It killed me a little to turn it on, but I had to know what happened.

The Enhanced had used tomato vines to trap an officer against the side of the building he had been guarding. The building was a Biology lab that studied exotic plants. A spokesperson for the facility said that he had stolen fertilizer and nothing else. This lab was well known for studying manchineel trees, which were incredibly deadly. For him to steal only fertilizer meant that he was a huge amateur, which was doubtful considering what he’s already done, or had a plan.

The tomato vines were also weird. He could have used poison ivy and been more effective in securing the guard, but he chose to use the harmless tomato vine. That could have meant that his plan was even more intricate and thought out, but I doubted it. More likely, a tomato plant was easier to transport or he didn't want to hurt the guard. I hoped it was the latter: that would mean he had empathy. 

The enhanced was described as a young white male with brown hair and brown eyes, around six feet tall. The security cameras had a blurry video of him breaking in. He looked familiar, but the video was too low resolution to see anything and the description fit every white guy ever. 

RG: weird

JD: the description sounds like Jer

Jake had a point. Jeremy was included in the category of every white guy ever. The only difference was the eyes.

RG: jermy has blu eyes

BL: gay

RG: bi

JH: gross

JH: y would i be plant dude @jake

JD: white people are crazy ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Me: they really are

BL: :(

RG: :(

JH: :(

The news switched to a different story and I turned the TV off. My moms were going to be home soon, so I started to make dinner. I felt uncomfortable. The lab was very close to the school, only about a half-mile away. This meant that this dude was in the area. It was strange for two enhanced attacks to take place in the same area right after the other, especially if that area was in New Jersey. 

The next day at school, everyone was too anxious to do anything. It was like the day before a big snowstorm, no one was getting anything done and most of the teachers just gave us packets to work on. There was another lesson for advisory. It was the difference between an Enhanced assaulter and an Enhanced terrorist. 

Enhanced assaulters are people who get angry and upset and lose control of their powers. Attacking, injuring, and possibly killing others in the process. They usually aren’t planning their attacks for more than a couple hours and usually only try to hurt one person. That’s the kind of Enhanced police said Madeline was. Enhanced terrorism was more about hurting lots of people. They will usually plan for many days, weeks, or years, have more than one enhanced involved, and may use a combination of their powers and other weapons to hurt people. That’s the kind of Enhanced the Pyro was, and the kind of Enhanced Poison Ivy dude seemed to be. 

90% of Enhanced attacks were not premeditated. They were usually caused by bullying and did not involve much police investigation. The Enhanced individual involved would be sent to a special prison in Nevada and went through a rehabilitation program. Many of these attacks could be stopped without the help of an Enhanced hero. Enhanced terrorists have never been stopped without the help of another Enhanced. Enhanced terrorists were sent to a high-security prison in an undisclosed location where they stayed until they died.

The school also introduced some new rules. No one was allowed to go to the bathroom alone, they must bring a buddy of the same gender. The classroom doors had to remain locked and closed at all times except for the passing period. After school activities must have one teacher for every fifteen kids and anyone not with a teacher will be removed from the building. The janitors and teachers would now receive harsh penalties if they failed to lock all supply closets. The school also gained two more police officers to help the one we already had. 

By the end of the day Friday, everyone was on high alert. We had another advisory lesson about how to incapacitate an Enhanced attacker. It was informational and correct, but it was also a really bad idea on their part. Now the attackers could incapacitate me, but it could be helpful for anyone who wasn't a superhero. 

Jeremy gave me a ride home and gave me some time to pack my stuff. I said goodbye to my mothers and got back in his car. 

It wasn't nearly as awkward as I worried it would be. We finally finished level 9 on Apocalypse of the Damned, and then I destroyed him in Mario kart. We ended up sharing a bean bag by the time we finished dinner.

“Want to watch a movie?” He asked, bumping me with his elbow.

“Sure. what’s new on HBO.”

We’d seen most of the good movies on Netflix, so we usually watched them on HBO.

“Love, Simon is available.”

We had both wanted to see it when it first came out, but that was before the SQUIP and neither of us wanted to be labeled as gay. That wasn’t a problem now, though.

“Sounds good.”

He kept glancing at me throughout the movie. It was getting late and I was getting tired, so I rested my head against his shoulder, which made him temporarily stiffen and then relax. A few minutes later he put his arm around my shoulder. I sat there, enjoying the feeling until he turned to look at me.

“Hmm?”

I turned my head to meet his eyes. He had a strange look on his face.

“Can I kiss you?” 

His voice was barely more than a whisper. I nodded, not wanting to move much or say something and ruin the moment. He connected our lips.

It was a soft kiss. Sweet and tender. I had never kissed anyone before and Jeremy knew that. He ran his hands through my hair before bring them to rest on my cheek. He was gentle as he pulled away.

“Ok?” His voice was stronger now, but still quiet.

I nodded, catching my breath. 

He pulled me back in. Following his lead, as he deepened the kiss, I opened my mouth and leaned in further. He pulled me into his lap, biting my bottom lip. He started running his hands under my shirt. 

His hands were cold against my hot skin. I gasped against his mouth. Moving my hands down his body, I played with the waistband of his pants.

He pushed me off of him as his dad opened the basement door. 

“Jeremy, I’m home... Oh, hi Michael.”

Mr. Heere looked at me. I was lying on the floor, too close to Jeremy's bean bag, and too far from my own. My hair must have been a mess and my face bright red. He wasn't the most observant person, but he was not stupid.

“Hi, Mr. Heere." My voice was a half octave higher than normal. I'd tried to sound like I wasn’t making out with his son a few seconds ago, but I don't think I did that great of a job.

He spoke to Jeremy for a second and then went upstairs. 

“Sorry," Jer said as he pulled me back onto his lap.

“You're fine.”

I rested my hands on his shoulders.

“I didn’t want him to see, because then he’d never let you come over unless he was home.”

I laughed a little. His cheeks were dusted with red. It was really cute.

“I get it. but I don't think he's all that oblivious.”

I was still a little shocked and out of breath. We were silent, listening to the wind outside for a while. 

“Is this, like, a one-time thing, or …” I trailed off.

He looked at me. 

“It’s not just a one-time thing. I don’t know if you want to call it dating, though. I don’t really want to tell anyone." He took a deep breath.

I wasn’t offended. We were both annoyed with everything being public as soon as it happened to us. It would be nice for people not to know.

"I want you to be my boyfriend, though." He bit his lip as he spoke, locking eyes with me.

I smiled at him.

"I want that too," I said, bringing my lips to meet his.


	9. Chapter 9

On Sunday night, the fertilizer the Enhanced had stolen was found in the woods behind our school. It wouldn't have been suspicious except for the fact it was on specific plants, including those of the same species that he stole. If the town had calmed down at all over the weekend, it was pushed back into high alert. 

This was good because it meant that Jeremy and I were not constantly being watched for gossip. This was also bad because the whole town was constantly suspicious of everyone, even though there was a public description of the guy. It was probably fair, we didn't know who he was working with, but what wasn’t fair was the prejudice.

When the Enhanced first became public knowledge, a lot of people were afraid and said that we weren’t humans. That we were a threat. That we should be destroyed. After a while, this fear mostly went away except for in the craziest of people's minds. But after every terrorist attack, there were periods where everyone was afraid again.

It was similar to homophobia. There were camps and “therapy” that supposedly helped get rid of powers in kids and people were kicked out of their houses for being enhanced. It was a legal defense if you killed or injured someone after finding out they were an Enhanced. But it was mostly socially acceptable for people to be an Enhanced. 

It wasn’t fair, but it was probably natural that this fear existed. Imagine if a bunch of gay people stormed the white house and a bunch of other gay people had to stop them. Imagine if this was frequent. You probably wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the heroes and the villains, and would probably be suspicious of all gay people. It made perfect sense for people to be afraid of Enhanced. Gay people, not so much.

It was sort of funny to watch. People were saying horrible things about the Enhanced, which concerned me, but no one had ever found out my identity before so I wasn’t worried. but people kept finding things online on how to identify an Enhanced. The most popular way was to have someone smile. Supposedly, no Enhanced has ever had dimples. I had two, so it was complete bull, but it was fun to watch. 

It was concerning to see what people would try. One Wikihow article said that making a cut down the person’s face would tell you if they were an Enhanced or not. If it healed overnight, they were an Enhanced, if it didn’t or it had scarred, they were normal. It was based on the myth that all of the Enhanced had super healing and that we didn’t scar. Most of us had super healing, but many didn’t and all of us could scar. I had scars on my wrists and legs to prove it. 

I should probably mention, the scars on my legs were from the Pyro, not from what the scars on my wrists were from. 

At lunch, Brooke seemed a little on edge, even more so than everyone else.

“Is something bothering you Brooke?” I asked.

She took a shakey breath.

“People are awful. Someone tried to cut that weird kid nick. Like tried to slice open his cheek. They were only stopped because they used an actual knife instead of scissors or something.”

“Jesus,” Jake started, “he’s a little weird but he’s not a terrorist.”

“I know.”

I tried not to focus on how Jake said terrorist instead of Enhanced. The rest of lunch we didn’t talk much. 

There was an assembly instead of advisory. The whole school was going to be there, which meant they couldn’t take attendance. Jeremy and I slipped into the bathroom while the rest of our classmates headed to the auditorium.

We were barely out of sight of the doorway when Jeremy gave me a small kiss. 

“Hey.”

He smirked at me, putting his hands on my waist.

“Hey.”

He pulled me in for another kiss, one that I cut short by pulling away.

“I’m not making out with you in a school bathroom.”

He pouted, and I gave him a kiss on the cheek. 

“Are you sure?”

I started to answer when we heard screams from the auditorium. There was the sound of a singular gunshot and then more screams.

“Holy sh*t!”

Jeremy's entire body was tense. He was shaking, a sign that he was on the edge of freaking out.

“We’ll be OK if we wait it out in here,” I assured him. I wrapped my arms around him and rubbed his back.

“Maybe.”

We hid in cabinets under the sink. I was worried, we could too easily be cornered in here and it was likely that I would have to use my powers to get us out. There were footsteps out in the hallway. 

I heard a distinctly female and familiar voice say: “Check in there.” but I couldn’t figure out who was speaking.

Peeking through the keyhole, I saw a person come in. I tried to get a good look at their face, but they had a mask on. He looked in all of the stalls and then called “all clear” to the woman outside. 

They started talking to each other right outside the door. 

“We need to find the two boys, they’re the only ones who could ruin our plan right now,” The woman said.

“This school is huge, by the time we find where they’re hiding right now, they’ll probably have already escaped.”

The man's winey voice was familiar.

“They were in the Library before the assembly, that means they’re between there and the auditorium. They probably don’t even know what has happened yet.”

I heard the footsteps fade. 

I stepped out from under the sink, Jeremy followed my lead.

“What should we do?”

Jeremy was starting to freak out. I pulled my phone out of my pocket before they came back.

“911, what is the nature of your emergency?”

“I’m at Middleborough High School. I heard a shot fired in the auditorium. The whole schools at an assembly, I think it’s the Enhanced terrorist from the news.”

I tried to sound panicked. I hoped that the women at the call center couldn't tell how calm I really was.

“Ok. Police are on their way to the school now. Where are you in the school building?” She asked.

I faked a sob into the phone.

“I’m in the bathroom on the first floor, by the library.”

“Okay, what’s your name?”

Footsteps approached the bathroom again. 

“Jeremy Heere.”

Jeremy gave me a confused look as I hung up.

“You must have missed something. Go look again, I’ll check the closets by the auditorium.” 

One set of footsteps walked away. I couldn’t tell what the man was doing, other than the fact that he was standing outside of the door. He took a loud deep breath and stepped into the bathroom, seeing us almost immediately after he did. 

“There you two are!”

He raised his arms, meaning he was going to use his powers. His sleeves slid down his arms and I recognized a birthmark on his wrist. This guy was an Enhanced I had fought before. He could create poison and acid. I had never learned his name (or gave him a cheesy nick-name) but he was only a few years older than me. 

I reached my hand towards the sink, bursting the pipes. He sprayed some sort of acid at me and I met it with a wall of water. Jeremy hid behind me, which was going to make this a lot easier. He took several steps toward us, but he temporarily stopped spraying acid. 

He started to step through the shield I had made with the water bringing his arms up to spray more acid. I brought down the light above our heads, electrocuting him through the water. He fell to the ground, limp. That didn't mean good things for his health, but he was Enhanced. He'd probably heal.

I turned around to make sure Jeremy was OK. Whether it was being attacked by the Enhanced or the electricity, he was passed out on the floor. Checking his pulse, I started to make a plan. He and I were going to have an awkward conversation later, but right now, I needed to save the entire student body.

After I quickly changed into my suit, I jumped onto the counters by the sink. The ceiling was made out of a series of tiles that could be pushed up for easy access. It was hard to reach from the floor, but once I was on the counter I could climb into the dead space. 

I crawled my way over to the auditorium. Most of the auditorium had a different ceiling, but the tech booth and the dressing rooms had the same tiles as the rest of the building. 

I lifted one of the tiles in the booth and peeked in. Mr. Reyes was unconscious on the floor with a plain green vine wrapped around his throat. He would suffocate to death if he was stuck like that much longer.

Turning invisible, I jumped down into the small room to untangle him. There was a good chance the Enhanced would be able to sense if I killed the vine, so I carefully pulled it off of Mr. Reyes’s head and let it wrap itself around the leg of a chair. 

There was a loud BOOM from the stage and I spun around to look. 

The entire stage was shrouded with plants. The staff and administration were all tied with poison ivy vines. Several of the teachers had bright red rashes appearing on whatever bare skin they’d been showing. 

Several students were crying. The aisles of the theatre were filled with what looked like poison sumac trees and the doors were blocked by thick hedges. 

From where I was standing, I could see a man standing on the stage, but I couldn’t make out much more. 

Grabbing the control tablet from the booth’s table, I made a plan. I snuck out the side door of the booth onto the catwalk. Treading lightly, I walked over to the stage. From my new position, I could finally see who was on stage.

Dustin Kropp.

Dustin Kropp was holding our entire school hostage. 

He looked around and took out a walkie-talkie. 

“He isn’t here yet. Did y’all find anyone?” He spoke into the device scanning the room as he spoke.

“I haven’t found anything,” the woman from earlier said, “Tanner stopped responding. I’m going back to where he was last looking.”

If she went to the bathroom, Jeremy would be in danger. I only had minutes to act and save the people in here. 

I turned on the tech control tablet and turned the brightness of the stage lights to 100%. Then, I turned the house lights to 30%, so people could still see but not as bright as the stage.

Dustin’s head jerked to face the ceiling.

“Come to the auditorium. I’m going to need backup,” he said into the walkie-talkie. 

That bought Jeremy time, but wouldn’t help me much. 

From my spot on the catwalk, I sent a bolt of electricity to the hedges blocking the emergency exit door at the back of the theatre. The hedges gave way and crumbled. I did the same to the trees filling the aisles. Once people started making their way out, I turned my attention to Dustin.

Electrocuting the plants had given my position away. He was now staring up at me from the stage, but given the spotlight directly in front of me, I doubted that he could see me. 

“Finally! What took you so long?” He taunted.

The curtain at the back of the stage moved. Whatever was behind it was massive. The curtain was easy to move, so if it was controlled by Dustin it would have to be draining him.

Sirens in the distance distracted me just long enough that Dustin was able to grab an escaping teacher and pull them onstage with his other hostages. She made a choking sound. 

I needed to act quickly and take Dustin out or people were going to die. 

“I was talking to your friends in the hallway,” I said, flashing the stage lights, “that acid dude didn’t put up much of a fight. I hate to kill, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

The only people left in the room were definitely too occupied to listen to me talk, so my bluff wouldn’t affect my reputation. It did affect Dustin, though. He visibly swallowed.

Still playing with the lights, I went invisible and started moving towards the stage access ladder. Dustin was standing way too close to the remaining hostages for me to try hitting him from a distance.

He covered his eyes in response to the flashing and turned to face the back of the stage. The Curtain moved again and a clear bump moved along it from the inside. Dustin reached his arm towards several of the administrators and the vines around their throats tightened. The sirens were getting louder, but my time to act was running low.

After sliding down the ladder, I ran over to the teachers to cut the vines. There were still a few people left tied up, but Dustin didn’t seem concerned with them. Clearly, he’d just wanted to get me down to the stage. 

The _ thing _ behind the curtain was rumbling and the curtain was shaking. There was a BANG from the ceiling being hit by something heavy and the curtain fell to the ground. 

A massive Venus flytrap head rose from the pile of the fabric. The head was supported by a thick poison oak vine covered in thorns. The flytrap seemed to be reinforced with some kind of squash and its fangs were dripping with a black liquid that smelled sweet even from across the stage.

The good news was that Dustin couldn’t control the poison, so he’d be handicapped. 

The bad news is that the squash would act as an insulator, limiting my ability to electrocute the plant monster.

The thing lunged at me and I jumped into the wings. Running toward the prop closet, I sent desperate shocks its way. I grabbed the hack saw we kept in there and turned to face the plant. 

The Monster pulled back and prepared to strike. When it pounced, I rolled out of the way and lifted my saw to cut the neck of the monster. Before I could, a vine wrapped around my ankle and lifted me into the air.

The thing tossed me in the air, turning me upside right. As the plant started throwing me again, the Police knocked down the Theater doors with a BOOM. 

Dustin was distracted and I pulled myself onto the main vine of the monster as I fell. 

I got to work with the hacksaw as the franken-plant squirmed beneath me. The thorns pierced the flesh on my legs, causing my blood to drip onto the floor.

The pain made it nearly unbearable to hang on and I could feel my strength dwindling. With one final push, I sent a bolt of electricity to shock Dustin and I broke the monster’s neck with a SNAP. 

The flytrap and I landed in the small puddle of blood forming on the floor. Some of the poison dripped on the floor next to me, making my eyes water and my lungs ache. Coughing, I stood to see if the police needed assistance

Dustin had collapsed on the stage next to the remaining hostages. As the police arrested him, I ripped part of my suit off to bandage my leg and hobbled away. 

One of the custodians had already brought a mop over and cleaned my blood off the floor. I gave him a smile and limped out of the theatre. Police were conducting a thorough search, so I wasn’t worried about any hostages I had missed.

Now I had to sneak out of the school without anyone figuring who I was. 

Invisible, I walked outside. There were a lot of crying students and the police were interviewing several witnesses, including Jeremy. 

“The second backpack is my friend’s,” he said as I walked over, “he wasn’t feeling well, so I gave him my keys and told him to lie down in my car. I said I’d bring his backpack to him and give him a ride home after the assembly. He should be there now.”

His shoulders were tense and he scratched his neck as he spoke. For an actor, he was a terrible liar. Behind his back, he was dangling his keys in his hand, out of sight from anyone else. 

“let's go check there now,” the police officer said.

“And we can leave after? We’re good to go home?” Jeremy asked

The officer nodded in response.

I carefully took his keys from him and jogged towards the student parking lot. When I got to Jer’s car, I jumped into the backseat. Jeremy and the cop were still far enough away, I doubted they could see much of what I was doing. 

Grabbing the emergency blanket, I slid my mask off and hid it in my pocket. I tossed the blanket over myself and curled up as Jeremy and the officer approached the car. 

“Hey bud,” Jeremy said as he opened the door, “are you feeling any better?”

I shook my head and groaned. 

“Alright. Take your friend home, but make sure he’s buckled before you leave.” The officer walked away.

Once the cop was far enough away, Jeremy slid into the back seat next to me. 

“You have some explaining to do!”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok. It's been a minute. I've been busy, but I still have plans for this work, even if those plans will have to proceed at a much slower rate than originally intended. So it turns out, 5 AP classes means I have 5 AP classes worth of homework, who'd've guessed? (not sophomore year me) any ways enjoy this update, might be the last for another month

I smiled sheepishly at him. My body was strung out from the fight and I did not have enough energy to deal with an angry and confused boyfriend.

“Jer-bear, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but can we do this later? I promise we’ll talk.” 

My blood sugar was rapidly dropping. I needed food, and I needed it soon. The wound in my leg was pulsing and it wasn’t gonna get better if I didn’t get my sugar back up. 

Hurt flashed across his eyes before it was replaced with concern. 

“Yeah, you seem tired. You should change before we leave, though.” His voice was hushed but kind.

He reached into my backpack and pulled out my sweatshirt. I sat up and he gently pushed the top part of my suit down and helped me slide into my sweatshirt. Then, after grabbing spare sweatpants from the back, he slowly helped me push down my pants. He gasped quietly when he saw my thigh. 

“That looks like... it hurts.”

He grabbed a large gauze pad and tenderly placed it over my injury. I put my hand on his cheek.

“It’s fine. It’ll heal better once I can get some juice or something.”

I slipped on his sweatpants and he helped me walk to the front of the car. Several other students were beginning to walk towards their cars, so as soon as I was buckled, Jeremy pulled out of the parking lot.

Concern entered my mind as I thought about Dustin. Did I kill him? He had passed out, which wasn’t a good sign, but he’d also been overexerting himself. He’d been expecting me to put up less of a fight and to be less resourceful, he must have been at least as tired as I was. But in that weakened state, it would’ve taken less electricity to kill him. 

He was trying to kill me. He was trying to kill everyone in that auditorium. He didn’t deserve mercy. But I still felt guilty for hurting him, let alone killing him. I’d never killed anyone and never intended to, but what if I had to?

Growing up, it was frustrating to see Batman have the Joker arrested, just for the Joker to come back and attack Gotham again. There was no chance for rehabilitation in jail. At that point, why don’t you just kill him? But now I understood that that wasn’t my call to make. I wasn’t Judge, Jury,  _ or  _ Executioner. I was some asshole with a costume and low self-esteem. I didn’t get to decide if someone had the ability to change, or if jail was the place to do that. 

But I had decided that. And I didn’t mean to.

I killed him.

Before I knew it, Jeremy was pulling into his driveway. He grabbed some fruit thing for me and helped me upstairs. 

“You mentioned you needed Juice…” He trailed off.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, accepting the container.

We quietly looked at each other as I ate. After I finished, I fiddled with my sleeves and stared blankly at the wall. Jeremy’s clothes were too big for me and the sleeves of his sweatshirt kept sliding down to cover my hands.

Eventually, I turned to look Jeremy in the eye.

“What happened? Are you the Hurricane? Was that Dustin?”

Dustin.

I killed him. 

“Yeah. I’m- I’m the hurricane.” I stuttered, barely remembering to breathe.

Jeremy gently took my hand.

“What happened?” He reiterated his questions, “Was that Dustin?”

I killed him

“There was- There was an attack.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t know that I killed him, and it wouldn’t do anything for me to worry about it now. “An Enhanced held the school hostage. He could control plants. He stabbed me with some poison ivy nightshade monstrosity.”

Jeremy pulled me against him and into his lap.

“Hey, it’s okay. Was the Enhanced Dustin?”

I killed him.

“Yes. I… I think he’s dead. I think I killed him.”

He wiped tears from my eyes and pressed me against his chest. I sobbed in his arms. Jeremy rocked back and forth, rubbing small circles on my back to comfort me. The air in his room was cool and his body was warm.

“Can you tell me five things you can see?”

Jeremy had been going to therapy after the SQUIP. He’d been sharing exercises to help with his anxiety in case he had a panic attack around me.

I opened my eyes.

“The crack in your wall from when we were seven. Blood on your sweatpants. The pillows we tie-dyed a few summers ago. Mud on your sweatshirt and…” I looked around the room, trying to find one more thing to acknowledge. “And You?”

He smiled, still holding me. I took a couple of deep breaths.

“Good. Can you tell me four things you can feel?” 

His voice was soft.

“Your hands on my back. The cold air in your room. Your chest falling and rising.”

I was beginning to calm down. As long as I didn’t think, I wouldn’t panic.

“Can you tell me three things you can hear?”

“Your voice. Your ceiling fan-.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. “And my phone ringing.”

I looked at him, expecting him to continue.

“Are you gonna answer that?” He pulled away and smiled at me.

“Shit! Yeah. That’s what people normally do,” I said as I awkwardly pulled my phone out of my pocket.

“Micheal?” My mam á  said once I picked up, “Are you okay? I know there was an attack at your school… The terrorist is here. He’s got some chemical burns, but no sign of damage from the Hurricane’s powers.”

I sighed with relief. I didn’t kill Dustin. I didn’t even hurt him.

“I’m going to have to stay late, but I’ll see if your mom can get off work early.” She finished.

“Okay, Mamá! I’m fine, Jeremy gave me a ride home. love you! Bye.”

She called “bye” back and hung up the phone.

I looked at Jeremy, abashed.

“Dustin is fine,” I said, starting to feel embarrassed about crying.

He kissed my cheek and looked at me expectantly.

“So… Can you explain what happened now?”

I explained everything to him. How I got my superpowers, each traumatic event, the first few supervillains I fought, and finally, everything that had happened once he passed out in the bathroom. He was largely silent except to mutter a small “I’m sorry” when I mentioned turning invisible in class when he had the SQUIP. 

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” he said.

I looked at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since we left school.

“Jer. It’s not your fault. It’s not. Besides, being invisible has helped me a whole bunch.” I gave him a smile. 

He didn’t care if I told him it wasn’t his fault, he would always blame himself. His logic was that he shouldn’t have taken the SQUIP, and this wouldn’t have happened. But by that logic, it would be Rich’s fault, or whoever offered Rich the SQUIP’s fault. In reality, it was the SQUIP’s fault, or whoever made the SQUIP’s fault. 

Before he could respond, I got a text from my other mom.

MM: Where are you!

MM: There was an attack!

MM: Come home NOW!

“Sorry. I gotta go, bear.”

“I’ll walk you home. Make sure you’re okay. Your leg was pretty bad.”

My thigh had mostly healed and I doubted I would have trouble walking home, but I wasn’t going to pass up more time with my boyfriend.

“Thanks.”

While it had healed, my leg still hurt on the walk home. I was half tempted to ask Jeremy to carry me, but that's not really what superheroes do, so I limped along-side him.

When we got to my front door he kissed me quickly and called: “Bye Mikey! See you later!” before walking away.

My mom opened the door before I could really turn around and pulled me inside.

“Are you OK? Tell me what happened!”

I was getting tired of explaining things, but I told her what had happened. She wasn’t concerned for Dustin’s life - “he shouldn’t be committing Enhanced terrorism if he doesn’t want to die”- but she was concerned about the women’s voice I heard. 

“So he wasn’t alone, and had at least two accomplices, probably more.”

“Yeah.”

I hadn’t thought too much about the possibility of other people, but it was definitely likely that this wasn’t a three-man operation.

“Did you recognize the woman's voice? Was it someone you’ve fought before?”

One interesting thing I noticed is that very rarely was a super-villain a woman. It wasn’t related to women being less likely to be enhanced, it’s just that they weren’t super-villains as much as guys. I’m sure there’s a whole list of reasons for that, like women being suspected less than men and women planning things better so they didn’t get caught. But anyway, I had only fought maybe six women out of the close to fifty Enhanced I had fought.

“No, Any woman I’ve fought before is in jail. I could’ve sworn I’ve heard her voice before, but I wouldn’t know where,” I said.

“So that narrows it down…” She snorted sarcastically.

She continued to talk. I wasn’t as worried about the other terrorists as I was about the nature of the two recent attacks. In both cases, there had been very little collateral damage. Normally, the Enhanced villains were loud and wanted attention. They would collapse any building, burn any bridge, kill any public figure, or murder any number of people to get what they wanted. These latest attacks didn’t have any of that, they seemed to be waiting for the spectators to be able to escape, like they were waiting for the spectators to be saved.

“I think he was waiting for me!”

“What?” 

“Dustin! He did a bit of damage to the building, but hardly any to people before I showed up. No one besides him and me got hurt. It’s like he knew I was coming and wanted me to see. Madeline’s attacks both started before the hurricane was officially there, and if she did seem to not do much damage to people, it was because she had a specific target. Dustin did too! He didn’t know who I was, but he knew where I was because I had shown up at Madeline’s attack!”

“That does sound weird. Normally, these guys are all about the show. But Dustin didn’t want to start if you couldn’t see it? Super weird”

I thought for a moment about the whole situation.

“The people he works with are going to know who I am now.”

“How would they know that?” She asked.

“They’ll know who wasn’t in the auditorium, but they’ll also know that the doors to the school didn’t open until the police arrived. They know who I am.”

My mom jokingly rolled her eyes at me.

“There’s no way in hell you were the only student in the whole school to avoid the assembly.”

“As the poison guy and the woman were talking they mentioned there only being two students who could mess things up for them, me and Jeremy.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Maybe they’ll think it’s Jeremy!”

I sighed. It’s not that my mom didn’t care about innocent civilians, it’s just that she prioritized my safety over theirs. Which would be great if my part-time job wasn’t Enhanced crime-fighting.

“That’ll just put Jeremy in danger!”

“I’m teasing. It’ll be OK. There’s a good chance that information didn’t get back to the bigger organization yet, or that there is no bigger organization, just that one woman and a diverse plant collection. Either way, you’ve got some time.”

She was right. The streets and surrounding towns were crawling with cops, and most Enhanced terror groups didn’t use electronic communication, so it was unlikely the woman was able to contact anyone. If this woman was alone, she was powerful, but I had taken out her two allies in one day so now I had significantly less to worry about. The problem would be if she was a part of a greater organization and that organization found out who made the 911 call. They would assume Jeremy is the hurricane and he’d be a target. 

But I didn’t have time to worry about that tonight. I still had to tell her that Jeremy knows who I am and I still had to convince her to go on the date with mamá, regardless of the attack that had just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aight, so that's done, sorry it's a bit of a filler chapter, but I felt like i needed to connect some dots and just pull my own ideas together, which probably meant I just spoiled the entire story and the twist I have planned for soon is ruined. tell me what you think. Who do y'all think this woman is? Y'all think that there is a bigger organization or is it just Dustin, poison guy, and the woman? How do you think the town is gonna recover from 3 Enhanced attacks in a month? Comment your thoughts or any suggestions or just say hi!


	11. Chapter 11

It turns out, the Middleborough school board did not let us go back to school on Monday, nor did they the next week. Nor for several weeks after. Which was totally fine by me.

The school needed to get all the poisonous plants out of the school, and there were a lot. They were in the ceilings and the walls and the vents in completely opposite corners of the school from the auditorium. They also needed to upgrade security, replace all the windows so that they’d open down and not up, fix electricity damage in the auditorium (whoops), fix water damage in the corner of the school where Madeline had attacked (double whoops), and investigate all of the staff for possible connection to the attacks. 

I felt a little guilty that I caused that much damage, but being off school for a few weeks was totally cool by me. 

They had teachers give us all the work we would have had over the next while so that we wouldn’t fall behind. I finished all of it over the weekend, which was not what the school board intended, but who's gonna stop me?

I called Jeremy on Friday night to let him know that he was probably a target. He was OK with that and said he was mostly glad I wasn’t mad at him for the SQUIP thing.

My mom was surprisingly cool about the whole “Jeremy knows” thing. She told me to be careful but if that’s what I had to do, that’s what I had to do. 

I did convince them to go on their date, and it was completely fine. Mom said “Yes” and they started planning their wedding for next summer. 

The mall reopened. Considering that we didn’t have school, this was the only place for most of us to see our friends. 

Jeremy and I hung out at our houses a lot during the first week or so, but eventually, we got tired of just making out and decided to go to the mall. 

It had completely changed. They had been needing to renovate for years, some parts definitely still had asbestos, but they had managed 40 years' worth of renovation and repairs in 3 weeks or so. 

The entire ceiling was changed so that the skylights were significantly stronger. There were 3 new entrances added and almost all of the doors had been widened. The floors were changed from carpet in 80% of the stores to tile or hardwood and the movie theatre had gotten the upgraded seats. The entire mall was updated to a much more modern style than it had been.

What was really changed was the food court. The entire thing_ had _ been destroyed, so it made sense that it would change the most. Most of the same restaurants were there, but the tables and chairs were new, and the artwork was amazing. The ceiling was designed to look like a hurricane on a radar, and on the ground lining up with the eye of the hurricane on the ceiling was a fountain with a statue of me (or more accurately, the Hurricane) standing at the top. 

Jeremy teased me for smiling at that, but I was really touched. I rarely got to see the impact I had.

One odd thing was, besides the mall, the whole town was mostly unaffected by the attacks. To the degree where it was weird. Sure, some buildings had been closed but overall the people and general morale went unchanged. 

I understood no concern after Madeline’s attacks because it seemed like a one-time thing and people wanted to move on. But now there had been multiple attacks and people still didn’t care about the Enhanced. I guess that was good for me, but only other teenagers seemed bothered by the idea that they could be killed. It was seriously strange. And seriously suspicious.

Two weeks after we had gotten out of school, I realized how much I had let my personal life affect my superhero life. I had not gone on a run in weeks or done much working out at all, which would put me at a severe disadvantage if I got into a fight that came down to exhausting the other person again. To make up for the lost time, I started back up on an intense routine. 

Through reviewing a couple of public pictures from the fight in the auditorium, I’d also realized how conspicuous my suit was. It was a mix of electric blue and white, both of which glowed in the dark. I had also grown about 2 inches since this summer when I had last updated the suit, so it was starting to show my ankles. I went to Joanne's and a computer store to get some stuff for a new suit and got to work.

I rarely went patrolling anymore, but that was because I wasn’t allowed to solve problems that weren’t enhanced. That being said, I started to patrol a little. I was looking for any possible Enhanced from the mysterious and possibly nonexistent organization. Now that my suit wasn’t a glow stick, it was a lot easier to go undercover in areas. I wasn’t sure what to look for, but I knew the woman’s voice and I could probably figure out who she was if I heard it again.

Throughout the four or five weeks we were out of school, there were no Enhanced attacks in the area I patrolled at all. Not even a small mugging or store robbery. Normally there would be frequent small events once or twice a week. Not one event in weeks was crazy, and frankly, suspicious. 

Maybe I was just on edge from everything that happened, though. 

By the time we were allowed to go back to school, it was mid-march. Most of the snowy season for the year had passed and we had six weeks until spring break, six weeks of almost guaranteed no extra days off. Regardless of that, everyone was excited on our first day back, lots of people saying high to friends that they hadn’t seen over the break.

I was curious to see if everyone in all of my classes would still be enrolled, as I had recently read that areas that experience Enhanced attacks would also see large percentages of their populations moving away. It was pretty bizarre that no one seemed to have skipped town after multiple attacks. 

The principal came over the loudspeaker the first day back and spoke to us about “staying strong” and they briefly spoke about the vaping epidemic at our school. Outside of building damages, no one cared that the entire student body (and most of the staff) were traumatized.

The school had very few noticeable changes. The number of security cameras had increased, all of the doors locked automatically, and the windows opened differently too. It was clear that the staff had serious policy changes too, but I didn’t know exactly what they were. 

In a very public school fashion, the school gave Jeremy detention for going to the bathroom during the assembly. They were lunch detentions and didn’t go on his records because he “did the right thing by calling the police,” but they still had to punish him for not going to the assembly. 

There was a really good chance I was paranoid, but I kept hearing the woman’s voice around school and it was seriously freaking me out. I asked Jeremy about it a few times and he said he heard it too, but that still didn’t mean it was actually there. It sounded familiar, but there’s no way this woman’s voice was everywhere in the building, so I figured it’d be best to ignore it.

The first few days back were completely drama-free, but once everyone settled back into a routine, things got bad. Rumors that everyone was an Enhanced spread. Lots of people suggested that Dustin wasn’t working alone and that his accomplice goes to our school. While they at least half corrected, it was just an excuse to gang up on the weird kids. 

Another rumor spread too. Jenna, or more accurately, Chloe using Jenna, told people that Rich and I were dating. Obviously this wasn’t true, but everyone believed it. Jeremy (obviously) didn’t but Brooke and Jake both did. For some reason, after hearing that Rich was my boyfriend Jake and Brooke started acting really weird and petty towards me.

Overall though, after the school was repaired, things went back to normal.

\---------------------------

On the Thursday of our second week back, Jake cornered me in the bathroom after school. Even after we became friends, Jake had always scared me a little. He had so much power over what people thought of each other that he could ruin my life if he wanted to. So him standing in front of the exit, a good 4 inches taller than me, was slightly terrifying. 

“Why didn’t you tell us that you and Rich were dating?”

I assumed by “us” he meant him, Brooke, and (in his mind) Jeremy, but I still glanced behind him to check that he was alone.

“Because we’re not…?” I said.

“You know it’s OK if you are, right? No one’s gonna bully you if you’re gay.”

It’d be pretty weird if Jake just wanted to encourage me to be open about my sexuality, but weirder things have happened this year.

“I am gay, but I’m not dating Rich. Is this all you wanted to talk to me about because I have things to do.”

“Really, it’s fine if your dating Rich, I just want-”

I cut him off.

“I’m not dating Rich, I'm da- I like Jeremy!”

I prayed he didn’t notice my slip up, but he seemed more concerned with the implications of what I said than what I actually said.

“So he’s single?”

I guess that was why he was so petty about me “dating” Rich.

“As far as I know, can you let me through now?” I asked, trying to push behind him.

“I can help you get together with Jeremy if you help me get with Rich!”

It seemed like he didn’t mean to say that, but then he looked at me like a lost puppy and I decided I should just go along with whatever plan he had.

“Of course I’ll help you. See you later.” I said, smiling at him.

He stepped out of my way and I headed towards where Jeremy’s car was parked. 

On my way to the parking lot, I passed Chloe and Jenna in the hallway whispering about something. They stopped as I walked by and gave me dirty looks. I returned the favor and kept going. They were normally with Christine, especially after school, so it was pretty weird that they weren’t with her. It’d probably be drama tomorrow, which meant that the whole Rich and I think would be old news. 

I got into Jeremy’s car and started telling him everything that had happened with Jake when I realized something. 

“The woman we heard in the bathroom was Jenna!” I practically shouted.

“What- that- that has nothing to do with what we were just talking about Michael!” He said, giving me a look.

“But it’s true! I walked by her and Chloe talking and that was her voice!”

“You might be right... “

He was silent for a second as he pulled out of the Parking lot.

“Isn’t that gonna be a problem for you?”

He had said that he wanted to be involved in my “job”, so he asked questions and tried to help me. It wasn’t always helpful, but it was always cute.

“Yeah. It’ll probably be a problem.” I said. 

“How are you gonna solve it?”

“I’ll wait, probably. Although, I do want to be sure that she’s enhanced so I don’t randomly target her.”

“Is there any way you can tell if she’s enhanced?”

I’d talked to Jeremy enough about the Enhanced for him to know that the previous methods people in our school had tried were bullshit. 

“There’s a few ways, but all of them involve 1 on 1 interaction and not just looking.”

“Like what?”

I thought for a moment. There were a lot of things that tested for quicker reflexes, but most of them would be pretty suspicious to do in school.

“Like dropping a dollar through their hand and seeing if they can catch it.”

“Why would that work?” He asked.

“The dollar drops slightly too fast for a regular person to catch it, but most Enhanced better reflexes so they’d be able to.”

Jeremy nodded and we fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes. 

“We could do it in Calc. We have a sub tomorrow. I could say I'll give anyone a 20 who can catch it or something.” He broke the silence.

“That might work, but she’s not stupid. She wouldn’t want to risk someone finding out.”

If she was a part of this organization, there was a chance she was trained from a few months after birth to be an operative. There was also a chance she was enlisted in the past year once this organization found her. That was more common.

“We’ll see.”

The next morning, when he picked me up from my house, he showed me a creased 20 dollar bill. 

“Does it have to be new or will this one work?”

I laughed a little. The physics worked regardless of the condition of the bill.

“This should be fine. I can pay you back later.”

Homeroom was uneventful, as it usually was now that Madeline was in prison. When I got to the calc trailer, I got started on my work immediately, so that I wouldn’t be working all class. Everyone else came in, the sub took attendance, and then announced that she’d be in the next trailer over if we needed her. It was a bad idea to leave a room of high schoolers alone for a whole period, but she probably already knew that.

The class did try do work for about 15 minutes, but then we collectively agreed to riot. I had finished, and it looked like Jeremy had too, so I didn’t mind. Jeremy came over to where I sat, next to Jenna, and behind a Senior who lived in our neighborhood. 

“Hey, James. I’ll let you keep this 20 if you can catch it.”

James tried but failed. The whole point is that the thing was impossible unless your reaction time was about 1 tenth of a second. Most regular people could react in 1 fifth. It was simple physics. But I had never seen an Enhanced with a slower reaction time than 1 tenth of a second.

Jenna looked up from where she was sitting.

“That doesn’t look that hard,” She said, leaning towards Jeremy.

“You can try if you want.” He motioned for her to come over.

He dropped the bill through her hand and she caught it. 

“Thanks for the easy 20.”

She smirked at us and sat down.

During lunch, Jeremy seemed like he wanted to talk about it, but he obviously couldn’t in front of our friends. He couldn’t text me about either because Brooke was resting her head on my shoulder.

Conveniently, during Advisory, there was a lesson that involved talking about our emotions with a partner, which made it easy to talk to Jeremy without evesdroppers. 

“Does what happened in calc mean that Jenna is Enhanced?” He whispered. 

“It’s not certain, but it’s pretty likely. She’d have to be Enhanced or a really good athlete and Jenna isn't exactly a varsity player,” I said.

“That's a fair point.”

I wrote some gibberish down on the paper for the assignment. Almost none of the advisory lessons were ever graded by our teacher. She normally threw them in the trash after collecting them. 

“I wish I had any clue what her powers are.”

“You said your powers were linked to trauma, right? So what’s something that Jenna’s been traumatized by?”

Due to fear surrounding the Enhanced, where and how people got their powers was not researched at all. Also, since many superheroes died young, there weren’t any testimonials about where they came from either. The only thing we had to run on was my experience. 

“I guess that no one... cares about her. Not even most of her friends.”

“That’s not fair, lots of people like her. Hell, we were friends!” He said.

“What’s her favorite color?” I deadpanned.

“Good point. But how would that translate to a power?”

I sighed.

“I have no clue.”

The bell rang before we could think more. On our way out the door, Ms. Alexander told us to put our papers in the trash. 

By the time Jeremy and I got to his car, we were talking about other things. 

“So Jake likes Rich?” He asked, once I’d finally told him what had happened the day before.

“Yeah, who’d’ve guessed?” 

“He did run back into a burning building for him…”

I laughed.

“Well, I would have done that for you, even before I had a crush on you!”

He gently punched my arm.

“That’s because you’re literally a superhero.”

He turned out of the parking lot.

“You okay if we don’t go straight home?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, “So are you saying you wouldn’t’ve run into a burning for me?”

“Well, now I would,” He said.

“Before you wanted to date me?”

“I can barely remember a time where I didn’t want to date you, so maybe?”

“I’m both touched and a little hurt.”

He laughed.

“Mostly touched, I hope.”

He pulled into a small parking lot by a park. We used to go there as kids on Saturday mornings with his dad.

“Why didn’t you want to go home? You and your dad have a fight?”

“Sort of.”

He answered my question quickly and got out of the car. We sat on the swings for a while before he spoke some more.

“My mother is coming back to town to finalize their divorce,” he said once he finally spoke.

“Oh?” I responded, lamely.

“And she says that she has to stay with us, otherwise she won’t finalize anything.”

Typical Deborah, always needing to psychologically touture others to do anything for anyone.

“I thought you didn’t want them to be divorced?” I asked quietly, trying to keep my voice from sounding accusational. 

Jeremy leaned his head against the chain holding his swing.

“I don’t know anymore. The SQUIP messed with a lot of my memories of her. I can’t remember if she was an amazing person or like your dad.”

He sighed softly.

“I only know what she was like around guests. I can tell you that and what you complained to me about, but I don’t know what you didn’t tell me.”

“Can you please tell me about her. I want to know if I have an actual reason to be upset with my dad.”

I thought for a moment. Jeremy’s mom definitely had mental issues. She had really bad OCD and depression, so I didn’t want to paint an unfair picture just because I didn't like her, but the number of times Jeremy had snuck over to my house crying about something she did, made it seem like I probably had a fair idea of who she was.

“She was very… strict. She would punish you if you got anything below an A. She was always talking bad about my mothers for being gay and was fairly homophobic, but not quite as bad as my dad. She didn’t want you coming over to my house because we might ‘corrupt’ you.

“She on very rare occasions would get violent, but she would do it every once in a while. Your dad didn’t know about that and the one day she got physical in front of him, he kicked her out. She had some mental illnesses, but that’s not really an excuse. She was a pretty nasty person, even around guests.”

“So… I shouldn’t be around when she’s around?” His voice was shaky and frail.

“No.” I shook my head. “But you should talk to your dad.”

“She’ll be back in town tomorrow night. He just told me yesterday. That’s not that much time for me to find a place to crash for a few days.”

I reached out and put my hand on his cheek.

“Jeremy, you know you can always stay with us, right?”

“I’ll have to talk to my dad.”

He stood up and headed back to the car. We were quiet on the ride home, just listening to the radio. He pulled into my driveway and we sat there for a second, just looking at each other. 

“Text me. OK?” I said.

He nodded and I gently kissed him before getting out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally uploaded this October 1st, 2019, and let me just say: this chapter proves I predicted quarantine.


	12. Chapter 12

The information that Jenna was an Enhanced didn’t help much. If I didn’t know what her powers were, I couldn’t prepare. The only clue I had was that she was a massive gossip, but so was 95% of our school. I wished I had been a better friend to her while we were friends, but in all fairness, she wasn’t “Friend of the Year” either. 

I spoke to my moms about Jeremy staying with us and they were cool with it. It occurred to me that they still didn’t know Jeremy and I were dating, but I wasn’t going to tell them now if it would prevent them from letting him stay over. 

I went to bed early finishing my homework pretty fast and looking forward to a weekend with my boyfriend. 

For the first time in several weeks, I had a dream. If I dreamt, it was normally pleasant and would sometimes involve Jeremy and new sheets in the morning. But this dream was different. I’d had anxiety when I was younger, but I’d gone to therapy to help with it. After the SQUIP, I’d started noticing it more but rarely did it show up in dreams.

The first thing I remember from the dream was being surrounded by fire and smoke. I saw a man running in the distance and felt myself running away from him and started to feel faint. 

Then I was underwater and desperately trying to get to the surface, unable to breathe like normal.

The scene changed again, I was surrounded by flames again, but this time I was in the school auditorium and all of my friends were there, as well as Chloe, Jenna, Christine, a man I didn’t recognize, and, weirdly, Jeremy’s mom. Not only that, but in the other two parts of my dream, I was in uniform, but I wasn’t the hurricane in the last part, I was just me. 

What was more concerning was the fact that I couldn’t summon water, or turn invisible. I didn’t try summoning electricity, but I’ll bet I wasn’t able to do that either.

The man who I don’t know was summoning fire and forcing it at Jeremy and me. I couldn’t help him in any way. I felt powerless.

Finally, I was in New York and it was snowing. There was a little kid with me and we were both wearing shorts like the weather was warm but it had started snowing surprisingly. It seemed like I was having a pleasant day but now I was worried. I turned around and saw a wall of snow like a blizzard rolling in. I grabbed the kid’s hand and ran into the nearest building. We barely get inside before the entire street is invisible under a multiple foot deep sheet of snow. I watched as a terrified woman was swept underneath and buried in snow. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. It was about 6 AM when I woke up and the house was completely silent. I knew that it was just a dream, but that didn’t make it less concerning or feel less real. My therapist had mentioned that truly disturbing dreams might be something I should look out for because that’s how my anxiety had manifested itself in the past.

I grabbed my old notebook from therapy and wrote down my dream and analyzed it, but it still felt so real. Like it was really happening. 

I put my notebook down and used another technique I learned, ignore the issue, and come back to it later in the day. 

I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, so I got dressed for the day and went downstairs to get breakfast. We hadn’t gone shopping in about a week, so the only thing we had was cereal and no milk. I made a mental note to go to the store with Jeremy later and sat down to eat. 

My moms woke up at 7:30 ish and joined me at the kitchen table. 

“What time is Jeremy coming over, sweetie?” my mother asked as she sat down

“I don’t know. I think 4 ish. He texted me last night.”

She nodded and put a note in her phone.

“Are you OK, sweetheart?” She asked once she looked up.

“Yeah, I’m great,” I said.

“What’s got you so worried?”

My mom was better at figuring out when I was worried than I was.

“The woman I heard in the bathroom was someone we go to school with, but I have no clue what her powers could be,” I answered honestly.

“Do you have to figure out what her powers are? Maybe just wait and see?”

“I know she’s planning something, and I wouldn’t be doing what’s right if I didn’t try to stop her!” My mom said, gently. 

“We’ve never tried to predict someone’s powers before, they’ve always attacked before we had them on our radar.”

“Maybe she has attacked before,” mamá cut in, “I mean, we’d never seen Dustin before, but he used his powers multiple times before he did any serious attacks. And if there were at least 3 of them in the building then that means it’s a bigger organization. She’s probably had missions for that group before.”

She wasn’t wrong. There had been many large scale Enhanced groups before that had been discovered. They would usually assign 3 or 4 people to a large attack or send 1 or 2 people out on smaller missions. It was a little weird that they were recruiting at a highschool though. 

“They’re high schoolers, honey. Why would they be involved in a terrorist organization?” My mom asked.

“Mikey did say he thought that they knew where he lived. They probably know you’re young and tried to get your classmates involved.”

“How could they possibly know I’m a high schooler?” I asked.

“You’ve grown almost 6 inches since you started doing this. You were about 5’3” when you started, now your 5’9” Micah.”

“Oh, shit.”

That was one thing I’d never even thought about. Peter Parker never had to worry about it, so I didn’t either. But apparently Mr. Parker was an early bloomer and me becoming a superhero in the 8th grade made me a little short for the profession. 

“So they know I’m young… probably. But they most likely just saw where my activity was most focused. So they only roughly know who and where I am,” I said, “That still doesn’t help with what her powers could be.”

My mom sighed and nodded her head.

“You and Jeremy should look through some news articles, see if you find any Enhanced that look like her,” She said. 

“What a fun way to spend a Saturday night.”

They both laughed. Mamá stood up and started getting ready for work, and mom took a sip of her coffee before turning to me.

“Chiquito, when do you want to start picking up shifts at the salon?” She asked.

I hadn’t worked since before Madeline attacked, which was literal months ago. I should probably start picking up more shifts, especially if the Enhanced attacks were starting to cool down.

“I can start tomorrow and get back on to my regular Sunday, Tuesday, Friday rotation.”

She shook her head.

“I’ll book you for Tuesday. You should enjoy your weekend with your friend.”

“Thanks.” 

She smiled at me and put her mug in the sink before she and mamá headed off to work. The hospital was not all that far away from where the salon was, so mamá and mom would often carpool to get to work.

I glanced at the clock. 8:36. I still had hours before Jeremy would be here and I had a little bit of homework to do. I headed upstairs and pulled out my packet for Spanish. After you finish Spanish 3: 4, and 5 are just reviewing the things you’ve been learning for the past 5 years, so it was a breeze, only partly because I was fluent before I took any class. I worked on my problem set of AP physics and wrote a paragraph for AP Lang. I really didn’t have that much homework because I used advisory and homeroom to make a good dent. 

By the time I finished, it was about 1 PM, though that was because I was messing around on my phone for most of that time. I shot a text to Jeremy telling him that we needed to go shopping and then tried to take a nap to catch up on lost sleep. 

I didn’t dream when I slept. I hardly ever did. But I woke up feeling restless like I had drunk a gallon of coffee and now the caffeine was getting to me. 

It was already 3:30, so I ignored my racing heart and picked up the house a bit. 

Jeremy rang the doorbell at exactly 4. I opened the door to him looking very annoyed and his eyes tinged a little red. 

“She came earlier than expected.” He gritted his teeth as he spoke. 

“You OK?” I asked softly.

“Yeah, she only called me a slur twice.”

I gave him a small smile and grabbed his bag. Kissing him on the cheek, I dragged him downstairs to the basement.

“What’d the Wicked Witch do?”

He sighed. 

“She comes in at like, three-thirty. She opens the front with a key because we never changed the lock and just drops her stuff by the door. She didn’t knock or ring the doorbell or anything. She just comes in. She talks to my dad for a while and I’m upstairs so I don’t know what’s happening at this point.

“I come down and see her stuff at the door and hear that she’s already fighting with my dad. I go into the kitchen just to tell him that I’m leaving and she starts talking to me. She insists on knowing where I’m going, and when I tell you, she calls you the F slur and calls me the same for going. Then, she tells me she’s surprised I’m not crying like the b*tch I am. 

“Then, just to make sure I know, she calls me a slur I didn't really catch as I was leaving.”

He looks up at me as he finishes. I’m not really sure how to respond, but I assumed making a joke would probably not help. So, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him into a beanbag. He buried his face against my neck and I could tell he was crying. I sat there and rubbed his back for a while.

He pulled away and twisted us so that I was in his lap. He kissed me on the cheek before speaking.

“Sorry.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t apologize, bear. You’re fine.” I ran my hand through his hair.

“Still, you comforting me isn’t why I'm here.”

“All puns aside, that's the main reason you’re here!” I winked at him.

“Sure.” He rolled his eyes. “What did you want to do?”

He hated puns on his last name, but he’d tolerate them if they came from me. 

“Right. So I was talking to my moms, and they suggested that we look through news articles from the past, like, 3 years to see if there were any Enhanced events in this area that fit Jenna’s general description.”

“To help find her powers? That could work. Unless she’s just developed them…”

I sighed.

“Uh… We can cross that bridge when we get there!”

We got our laptops out and started searching for articles. I saw a lot of articles about Enhanced I had fought in the past, so I was starting to get worried that I wouldn’t find any new Enhanced when I found an article from FOX news. It was from about 10 years ago, meaning there was no way in hell it was Jenna, but it was interesting nonetheless. 

The headline was about New York’s unofficial superhero before me, Photon. The headline read “Photon defeated by mysterious Enhanced in July, neither have been seen since.” I was too young to have a super (haha) clear memory of it happening, but I remember hearing about it. Photon could run very fast and bend light to their will. 

They helped in the city for around 5 years, stopping muggers, protecting people, basic hero stuff. But then, one day, they were fighting a small group of enhanced when their powers just stopped working. Photon hid and the Enhanced robbed a bank, before disappearing for good. They stole about 3 million and somehow were never seen again. 

Lots of people speculated about why Photon’s powers stopped working. Some said he was old. Some said he never had any powers to begin with. But the most likely scenario is that one of the Enhanced that robbed the bank could stop other people from using their powers. That thought sort of terrified me, especially after the dream I’d had this morning.

“I found something!”

Jeremy shook me out of my thoughts pushing his computer towards me so I could read the story.

The headline was “bizarre bank robbery: police weren’t called!” It was from some news site that no longer operated, from about a year ago, and had some surveillance footage.

The footage showed a woman with a mask over her head and gloves on her hands stand in line at a bank. Two more masked people were in line right behind her. She gets up to the window and says something to the teller. The teller disappears for a moment and returns with multiple bank employees. The employees discuss something for a while before disappearing in the back and coming back with multiple bags full of money. 

The group begins handing money to the woman and her associates and stop once the woman speaks again. The 3 people leave, and the entire bank acts like close to a million dollars wasn’t literally handed over to 3 masked figures.

The article stated that the bank had no record of this as a legal transaction and none of the employees remembered doing anything. It was totally strange.

It was obvious that the woman had some sort of mind control powers, and she looked like she could be Jenna. In the picture, a few colored streaks were in the woman’s hair, and Jenna had had colored highlights last year.

That would suck if it was Jenna. I had only fought someone with any kind mind control powers once, and I’d barely survived. 

I had heard about his site earlier this year. A reporter for the site murdered his entire family and threatened to do the same to his co-workers. The site shut down shortly after. It was weird because it was the only site that had covered a story about an enhanced that could control minds robbing a bank. Not to mention that the reporter who went crazy was the author of this article.

Maybe it wasn’t so mysterious after all.

“Do you think this is her, Mikey?”

I smiled at the nickname. Only he and my moms used it, but it made me smile either way.

“It could be. It probably is, but I really hope not.”

He nodded and then clicked around on the site.

“Jesus. Did you hear about this writer?” He asked, sharing a horrified look with me.

“Yeah.”

He sighed.

“Do… Do you think that whatever group Dustin and Jenna were a part of were involved in that situation?”

“Almost certain.” 

He sighed again and made a face. He was clearly worried about me being involved with these guys, and I couldn’t blame him. 

“Do you need to know anything else about Jenna’s powers, or do you think this is good enough?”

“Good enough!”

We decided to have fun rather than to worry about the possible Enhanced threat. We played Mario cart for a while until my mothers got home. They had hit the grocery store on their way back from work so Jeremy and I wouldn’t have too. They’d also brought home pizza, which was amazing. 

The rest of the weekend passed without many interesting things happening. Jeremy and I went on a walk on Sunday morning and at one point, mamá pulled Jeremy aside and seemed to have a serious talk with him in the other room, probably about him knowing I was the Hurricane, but other than that, we just made out and played video games. 

Jeremy’s parents’ lawyers had worked things out very quickly and their divorce was finalized Monday morning. Jeremy’s mother left later that day and Jeremy went back home after school. 

On Monday night, I went out patrolling. I decided to go into the city, as Middleborough rarely was attacked. It was cool for mid-March and the air felt refreshing against my skin. 

New York started out as incredibly uneventful. There weren't many crimes I was allowed to help with, but even the ones I wasn’t allowed to intervene in didn’t seem to occur. I was there for about 3 hours and practically nothing illegal occurred at all. I didn’t even see a single Jaywalker. 

I was about to leave when I saw smoke billowing into the air from what seemed to be Times Square. Thinking about my dream, I half wanted to turn and run away, but it was my job to protect people, and if I could help, I would help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments, suggestions, criticism, and questions in the comments.


	13. Chapter 13

When I got to Times Square I saw hundreds of people running. The smoke was thick and filled the air from the street to above the skyscrapers. It was impossible to breathe and I felt nauseous, although that may have been anxiety from reliving my dream. 

The source of the smoke wasn’t immediately apparent, and I doubted it would be until the thousands of people finished leaving. The only way I had any chance of figuring out what caused the smoke would be to get a vantage point. 

I looked around. None of the buildings had fire escapes, but one building was getting its windows cleaned today and the platform the washers normally stood on was within feet of the ground. I ran over to it and pulled myself up onto the platform. I found the controls and pressed a button and the platform started to go up. I made it about 3 stories up before letting go of the button. 

The smoke was thinner up here but it still limited visibility. I could see a man standing on something burning, probably some art installation. The man was wearing some kind of black uniform that seemed familiar. 

I stared for a second before seeing his hand light up orange. This man was controlling fire. 

I pushed the down button on the platform and jumped when there were still 10 feet between me and the ground. I ran over to where this man was standing. It was almost impossible to see, but I could tell there were no civilians in the immediate area. The man saw me coming and turned to see me.

“Ah-ha! The hurricane. Just who I was hoping to see!” 

The man stepped off his platform as he spoke. I thought I recognized his voice but I couldn’t quite place it. He took several steps toward me, hands aflame. I started to use the electricity in the surrounding screen to give me power and a weapon if he got much closer.

“No need for that,” he said, reacting to the screens turning off, “I just want to talk to you.”

I definitely recognized his voice, although I didn’t want to believe it.

It was the Pyro, even though he was supposed to be in an international prison floating in the ocean. But I guess if "poison dude" could get out so could this guy.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice hard.

“Just to talk, I have some demands.”

I thought for a moment. This could very easily be a trap, but it could also give me some answers.

“What are they?”

“Well, you need to stay out of New York, Stay in New Jersey, and stay out of company business, or you’re going to have to pay in more ways than one. If you do what we say, we can make you the greatest Enhanced to ever live.” 

I gave a short laugh.

“I don’t think I’ll do that, but I appreciate the offer,” I responded.

He shook his head like he was scolding a child.

“See, you don’t have a choice. You need to stay in school, or we will make you suffer.”

So they knew I was in school and lived in New Jersey, but that wasn’t that surprising. 

“And in case you think we’re lying about making you pay, here’s some proof.”

He pulled reached into his pocket and for half a second I thought he was pulling out a gun, instead, he pulled out a photograph and threw it at me. I almost gasped in surprise. It was a picture of me, with my name and what must have been the date it was taken. 

“That’s your boyfriend, right Jeremiah? See, you’ve hidden behind your mask like a coward, thinking you and your loved ones were safe, but watch out. Do what we say, or Michael pays the price.”

I was angry, surprised, frustrated, and worried. Those are practically the worst possible emotions to be feeling in a high stakes situation, especially for an Enhanced. 

The power that I had been siphoning off of the screens around us rose to the surface with my anger and burst out, striking pyro and launching him back several yards. The pyro stood up and rather than turn towards me, he seemed to be speaking to someone on his left, behind a building. I took a step forward, ready to continue a fight I had already started when I noticed a black liquid seeping out from behind the building the Pyro was talking to. 

The pyro turned to me and smiled. 

“If that’s how you wanna play, then that’s how we’re gonna play!”

I smelled something sweet and then the Pyro set the black liquid on fire, creating a putrid black smoke. I should have realized sooner that the liquid was poison. I’d been a superhero for almost 4 years, I should have known better. But in all fairness, I’d been breathing in nothing but smoke for the last 10 minutes and it was starting to affect my thinking. 

The black smoke got closer to me and I realized what would happen if It got too close to me. Depending on the kind of poison it could burn my skin or my lungs, cause an allergic reaction and a rash, or just straight up kill me if I breathed it in. 

I turned and ran, breaking every fire hydrant and any pipe full of water I could on the way, hoping that would dilute the poison and prevent the smoke from diffusing around the city. 

I felt like I was going to pass out. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Pyro running. I continued to run until I was out of the smoke. 

I started to slow down around 19th street, but I didn’t stop until 8th street, which was a ways away from Times square. I turned to see the smoke. It was still rising high into the air, but it was grey and not black. I guess the Pyro wasn’t out for anyone’s blood but mine tonight. 

My skin burned. I couldn’t see skin under my suit, but from the itch, I could tell it was inflamed. I needed to get into clean clothes and wash my skin as soon as possible. If I let the poison sit against my skin too long, it could cause serious or even permanent damage.

My best bet would probably be jumping into a river. I considered the East River, but it was too far away for me to reach comfortably, and the Hudson was cleaner anyways. The Hudson wasn’t clean, but it was cleaner than the east river, and less salty, which made it feel cleaner. 

The lower west side of Manhattan was laid out in a very weird way, but I was only a few blocks away from the river. I ran hard, already out of breath from my 2-mile sprint. My thoughts started to blur together and my vision became hazy. I vaguely remember jumping into the Hudson and hitting the water, but from there I have no memory of what happened. 

\---------------------------

I woke up in my room at 10 the following morning. My mother sat at the foot of my bed, eyes red and watery. 

“Mom?” 

My voice shook as I spoke. My throat felt dry and burnt with every breath I took.

“Mijo! You’re ok!”

I nodded, not wanting to test my voice more. 

She helped me sit up and pressed a water bottle into my hand. She started to speak as I took a sip of water.

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

“Sort of?”

She ran a hand through my hand and gave me a concerned look.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” She asked gently.

“Jumping into the river.”

She laughed starkly.

“You jumped into the Hudson?” 

I gave a hoarse chuckle.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Mamá stepped into my room carrying a CVS bag.

“It probably was,” she said, “that might be one of the only reasons you’re still alive.”

She sat down on my bed next to my mom. She pulled out a Pedialyte and orange prescription bottle and handed them to me. The prescription was for a super-strong pain killer. Not opioids or anything, but what was effectively a super-concentrated dose of Advil. I took two pills and started drinking. 

“We know most of what happened up to you jumping into the river because of the news, but we don’t know what happened between you jumping into the river and getting home,” mom said.

“What happened after I got home?”

“Well you rang the doorbell and when we opened the door you were soaking wet and about to pass out. You somehow managed to take a shower and change clothes before passing out. I wanted to take you to the hospital, but Sofia convinced me that the hospital could figure out that you’re the Hurricane. 

“We thought that your healing ability would take care of everything except for the low blood sugar you probably having after using your powers. We put some frosting in your mouth to make sure you had some sugar in your system and then we sat here all night making sure you were still breathing,” my mom said.

“What happened while you were in new york? We only know what was on the news which probably wasn’t everything,” mamá said

I finished the rest of the Pedialyte and took a deep breath. I told them everything, including Jeremy and I dating and how they thought that I was Jeremy. 

“Michael,” mom said as I finished, “this is very bad. They’re targeting you, not the Hurricane. That means they’ll be watching you and if you do anything stupid as the Hurricane, you get hurt as Michael.”

“I know.”

“That means they’re targeting other people too. They think you’re Jeremy so they’ll target his dad. They’ll probably also target us and any friends you and Jeremy have.”

“I know.”

“Maria,” mamá said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. They are probably going to target all of those people, but we still have some hope. They don’t actually know who the Hurricane is. They are obviously scared of the Hurricane if they’re threatening him to stay in New Jersey. We know that Jenna or whoever is working for them, which they don’t know we know.”

“Yes, but they are still a much bigger organization then the three of us are. We know a few of their operatives. They’re breaking people out of prison. They’ve broken Tanner Williams out of jail twice now, and they can do it for other people too.”

“Who’s Tanner Williams?”

“The man who controls poison. They have multiple agents in prison and multiple agents who used to be in prison now out in the world. They’ve conducted at least 2 jailbreaks and we’ve heard nothing about it from any news organization. They’re good at covering things up.”

I was worried. Mom was right, whatever group of people was behind this was big and powerful, and we weren’t. But mamá was also right. We had some advantages. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation so I just sat there and yawned.

“Honey, maybe we should let Michael get some more sleep, he’ll heal much faster that way. We can talk more later.”

They stood up and left, turning the lights off as they closed the door. I laid back down and fell asleep almost instantly. 

\---------------------------

I woke up in the afternoon. My alarm clock said it was 4:30. I could smell food being cooked and I could hear three people talking, one of whom was definitely male. 

I got out of bed and stretched before heading downstairs. The house was warm and I was still sleepy so I almost tripped going down the stairs but I caught myself at the last second. 

My mom and Jeremy sat at the Kitchen table while my mamá stood at the stove making dinner. I sat down on the chair next to Jeremy and sighed quietly.

“Feeling better?” Mom asked

“Yeah, a lot better.”

I was still tired, but my throat didn’t burn anymore. 

“We’ve caught Jeremy up on what happened since he’s a part of this now.” 

“Sorry, Jer.”

“It happens.”

“Also, we’ve made some rules for the two of you.”

I’d forgotten that they didn’t know Jeremy and me were dating before today. 

“The door is always open to your room when he’s in there. You can have him over when we aren’t home but you have to tell us. If he’s going to say the night you need to tell us at least 12 hours beforehand.”

“Ok.”

“I assume that Mr. Heere has similar rules for you, Jeremy?”

“He doesn’t know,” Jeremy said, looking stressed at the mention of his father. 

“Well, I'm going to let you go home and tell him later.”

Jeremy let out a breath before smiling at my mom. He was clearly still stressed that he had to talk to his dad, but he was more relaxed now that he got to do it himself. 

I wasn’t worried about his dad. He was a really chill guy who just wanted Jeremy to be safe and happy. While hi wife had been homophobic, he was cool with whatever. He didn’t know Jeremy wasn’t straight, but he wouldn’t care at all. He’d definitely make us keep the door open from now on.

Mamá and I finished cooking dinner and I set the table. My moms harassed Jeremy while we ate, as they had promised to do to whichever boy or girl I brought home.

My thoughts started to wander and I remembered the dream I had had Saturday morning. The first part of my dream had come true. It was such a specific scenario and I’d never had nightmares or been at all worried about it before, so it was weird to have a dream about it.

My mothers decided we needed to write down everything we knew and didn’t know about this group and write down what advantages or disadvantages we had, so after dinner the 4 of us sat in the basement with a expo-markers. 

We had a room in the basement that was intended to be used as a storage room, but after I became the Hurricane, my mom made it into a debriefing room for us.

Two of the room’s walls had large whiteboards covering them from floor to ceiling. There were also multiple computers. One was the computer my mothers would use if I was in a fight and they wanted to contact me, the other computers were searching the internet for news stories about the Hurricane and other Enhanced in the area. I kept my old suits down there and other things like devices that I planned on using but weren’t ready yet. 

We sat in front of one of the walls with the whiteboard and my mom began to write. Within the hour we had filled the whiteboard entirely and had written on the second one. The list was long, but still probably incomplete. 

We knew several of their operatives and their powers. There was the Pyro who could control fire. There was Tanner Williams who could control poison which we had a sample of on my suit, so we could start to identify and make an antidote for it. There was Jenna who could control her mind somehow. There was Dustin who could control plants and create hybrid plants, but he was in prison. 

Madeline might have also been a part of this organization so we added him down too. The nature of her attack was weird, she’d specifically targeted Chloe, not the Hurricane. But she’d still waited for the Hurricane to show up both times. She was also in prison, so she wasn’t a threat at the moment. 

We knew this organization was planning something in New York and that they roughly knew who I was and details about my personal life. We had an advantage that they thought I was Jeremy. I had fought most of the Enhanced involved before, and if I hadn’t fought them specifically, I had fought someone similar. 

At first, my moms just wrote on the boards, putting down as much information as they could remember. Then they turned to Jeremy and me.

“Anything we forgot?”

Jeremy and I read the boards before shaking our heads. Then, Jeremy shook his head again.

“Actually, I think I might know something. Today at school, Chloe and Jenna were whispering during homeroom. They were talking about what happened in New York yesterday and about me being the Hurricane. Jenna said she doubted it but ‘whatever Tanner said’ was what they had to believe and Chloe agreed. So, I think Chloe might be involved in it…” He trailed off.

His cheeks were dusted with just a little bit of red, like he regretted speaking. I grabbed his hand to comfort him. 

“I know next to nothing about this Chloe girl. How likely do you think this is, Michael?”

I was biased against Chloe. She never liked me and I never liked her. The idea of her being evil fit my confirmation bias. That being said, she was not a great human being, so it’s not like I was judging her completely unfairly.

“It’s definitely not impossible. And she’s a horrible person so it’s actually pretty likely,” I finally said.

“Ok! So we’ll put that down as a possibility. Anything else?”

The dream wasn’t super relevant, but it seemed like the perfect time to bring it up.

“I had a dream of what happened yesterday. like only a little bit, but I saw smoke and fire in New York with the Pyro Friday night.”

My mothers looked at me surprised, and Jeremy seemed a little confused. 

“So… you saw the future?” he asked.

“Maybe? It wasn’t very clear. I guess I did, though.”

“Ok,” my mom started, “you’re going to keep a dream journal from now on. Anything else to add?”

We shook our heads again, this time actually meaning it.

“Ok. Jeremy, go home. I expect that you’ll have talked to your dad by tomorrow afternoon? And you both need some sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! please comment suggestions, predictions, and criticisms! anything you can tell me to improve my writing helps a lot!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up on the last few chapters here, I hope y'all enjoy :p

When Brooke asked where I’d been, I brushed her off.

“I had the stomach flu,” I told her.

I didn’t want to lie to my friends, but since I was being kept under close watch by so many people, it was safest for everyone this way.

“Well, I’m glad you feel better now!”

She smiled and left. Smiling back, I headed to my homeroom.

I honestly didn’t feel that much better. I was exhausted on another level and some of the skin on my legs still had chemical burns that hadn’t healed overnight. They would eventually heal, but I’d be miserable the entire day. 

I didn’t see Jeremy on my way to homeroom and was starting to get concerned. He was in calculus, but he sat on the other side of the room from me. At lunch, I went to my Spanish teacher's room rather than sit in the library and make things awkward. 

After being ignored all day, I didn’t speak to him at all and ended up walking home at the end of the day.

When I got home, I wanted to talk to my moms about it, but they were at work.

I’d finished my homework the day before, so I got started on a separate project. I figured that if they thought Jeremy was the Hurricane, then he may have to pretend to be at some point.

So, I was making him tools that could make it look like he had powers. For the electricity, I was making what was effectively an EMP that could shut down electronics in the area and a little device that could shock people up to 4 feet away. For the water, I just used a highly pressurized hose.

I also started making a suit that would fit him because he was 4 inches taller than me and my suit wouldn’t fit him. I didn’t have his exact measurements in a few places, but we would hopefully hang out again before he needed it. 

My moms came home and checked on me, but I was just getting the hang of the sewing machine and didn’t want to stop for dinner. I never worried too much about even seams for me, but I probably shouldn't have half inch variability in a gift for someone else.

As I was hand sewing some of the exterior details on, there was a knock on my door.

“Come in!” I called, figuring it was one of my moms.

“Hey Mike,” Jake said as he walked into my room.

I scrambled to hide some of what I was doing.

“Whatcha working on?” He looked closer. “Do you do cosplay?”

“Uh… Sort of. It’s not really cosplay,” I said.

Nothing wrong with cosplaying, I was just too busy for it and didn’t want to be expected to do it. Plus I was still bitter from when I entered a Hurricane look-alike contest and came in second last year.

“So what is it?” He didn’t seem convinced with my lie.

“I’m just…” I trailed off, grasping at any believable explanation. “I’m just really dedicated to Halloween.”

His face lit up with a bright smile. He was a pretty great guy, just put in bad positions sometimes.

“That’s pretty cool! It looks like you’re making the Hurricane’s new suit. That’s awesome dude! He’s my favorite superhero. You know, I think Jeremy might actually be him.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Identity crisis averted. 

“I’m not as sure… but I can’t say he definitely isn’t. So what do you need?” I asked, returning his smile.

He coughed, seeming shyer.

“We said we were gonna help each other. Jeremy said something about you today, and I was just wondering if you had heard anything from Rich?”

I had actually. Rich had been by the salon almost every day I worked, and would talk to me for hours. Most of my shift, when I wasn’t helping customers.

“Yeah, actually. He’s been stopping by work all the time and won't shut up about this guy he likes,” I said.

Jake’s face fell.

“I think he likes you. Not me.”

I laughed a little. I’d been worried about that at first too, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t after a few conversations.

“The only adjective I’ve gotten when Rich describes him is ‘tall.’ so it’s much more likely that it's you and not me. What’d Jeremy say about me?”

Jeremy knew about my and Jake’s deal, so he was on the lookout for signs from Rich too. But he was probably also fucking with Jake and dropping hints that he likes me.

“He called you a ‘cutie’ the other day when you were sick. I was talking about how you color-code your subjects in a weird way, like who puts Science as Green?” Normal people. Science is Green and Spanish is Yellowish-Orange. I would compromise on other subjects but not those. “Science is Blue, everyone knows that. But he said “what a cutie” when I mentioned you put math as Red, like him. Math is totally Purple by the way.” 

When he finished, I wasn’t sure if I should argue that French is Purple, and there is no excuse for math being Purple, or if I should respond like a normal person would after “finding out” their crush liked them.

“Aww. He puts Math as Red too?”

Jake beamed and nodded.

“You know… I think Rich might put Math as Red, like a normal person. Red and Purple people just don’t get along.”

He snorted and pushed me off my chair.

The next day I didn’t see Jeremy at all. I was genuinely worried now. I knew he was at school but I didn’t see him. I once again didn’t sit in the library because I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t. My friends were at least a little worried because Jake texted me during lunch.

JD: Are you avoiding us because of what I told you about yesterday?

Me: absolutely. No normal human being puts History as Pink. I just can't be seen with you!

Me: In all seriousness, I'm just not feeling great and wanted to sit in a chair for lunch.

Not a total lie.

JD: Ok :(

JD: feel better.

I doubted I would. Everything was feeling really weird like I was thinking things through way too much. Everything I did was a deliberate thought and not automatic. Breathing, blinking, walking, writing, talking, eating. I had to think about all of it. Yesterday I had felt that way, but today it was so much worse.

By the end of the day, I was so out of it I could really only do one thing at a time. I was walking out of my advisory class to head home when Jeremy grabbed me and pulled me into a janitor's closet. 

“Why are you avoiding me? That’s not ok Mikey!”

His confusion was clear on his face.

“Um, I thought… uh…” I stuttered back.

“Mikey!”

He was starting to seem angry. Avoiding him had seemed like a good idea earlier, but now I couldn’t remember why I was doing it. 

He opened his mouth, as to say something when we heard voices just outside the closet. He put his hand over my mouth like he was worried I would speak.

“I need your report, Jenna,” Chloe said from the other side of the door.

“Jeremy was impossible to control like Debby said, but Michael was pretty difficult to do also. Is there any way he’s Enhanced too?”

Jeremy’s eyes widened, and I’m sure mine did the same. At least there was no doubt that Jenna was the Enhanced from the bank.

“If he was Enhanced, don’t you think there would be two superheroes running around? There’s no way Michael is Enhanced.”

I could practically hear Chloe rolling her eyes as she spoke. 

“You might be right Chlo, but it was weirdly hard to get Michael to do what I want.”

“Whatever. Did you get any information out of him?”

Jenna snorted at that.

“I control minds, I can’t read them Chlo. He hasn’t talked to any of his friends since yesterday morning, so he should be alone sometime after school tomorrow for us to do the rest of the plan. Just stick with the plan and don’t expect people to do more than they physically can!”

“I don’t understand why you can’t just make him tell you things! You control people's minds don’t you?”

“I don’t really.” Jenna’s voice was shrill. “I control what people think, we’ve talked about this before.”

“Well, I think that that’s stupid!”

They walked away after that and Jeremy took his hand off of my mouth. 

“Come on,” he said as he grabbed my hand and dragged me to his car. 

By the time we got to my house, I was thinking clearer again.

“Well I guess that’s why you're being weird,” Jeremy said, sitting on my bed next to me, “are you ok?”

I nodded and tucked my head against his chest. He gently rubbed circles against my back. He was making soothing shushing noises in my ear. I  _ _ was  _ okay _ , but I was still stressed out and just starting to process the new information.

Jeremy could tell. He kissed the top of my head and I slowly pulled away from his arms.

“At least we know now.”

That was true. It didn’t help me avoid my mind being controlled, but at least we knew.

“What should we do about this?” He asked softly.

I shook my head, I was clueless.

“You could just not think…”

I laughed.

“You know, that would work. I do foresee a small problem with that, though...” 

He was laughing now too.

“I can’t come up with any other solution right now. But I know you’ll think of something.”

He leaned in and kissed me. Feeling much calmer now, I returned the kiss. 

After a minute I pulled away, knowing that the kiss would turn into something more serious if we kept going. He pouted and I kissed him on the cheek. 

“We have more important things to do, Jer.”

I sat and thought for a moment. They had trouble controlling me because I was Enhanced, but they could still control me. That was terrifying, but freaking out wasn’t going to help me. My best solution at the moment was to trust my instincts and not my thoughts. Like spider-man.

They were completely incapable of controlling Jeremy. Jenna could have been lying or not trying that hard, but it seemed more likely that she was just not able to do it. This meant that Jeremy had to be ...Enhanced? 

It seemed unlikely because I had never seen him even accidentally use his powers, and there would be no reason for him to hide them from me. But it was the only possible way Jenna couldn’t read his mind  _ unless _ another Enhanced was blocking her powers. Which I doubted, as someone who went out of their way to protect Jeremy would try to protect me too. 

Probably.

So that left only the option of Jeremy being an Enhanced…

“Jer-bear?” I asked.

“Mikey?”

He looked up from his spot curled up against me.

“Are you Enhanced?”

“Not that I know of, why?” 

He didn’t seem completely sure.

I explained the whole mind control thing to him, and he seemed to follow.

“I mean, I don’t think I am. It’s not totally impossible…”

“Let’s test it!”

I grabbed a dollar from my desk and held it up. He held his hand below mine. When I dropped the dollar, he caught it as easily as Jenna.

“I don’t think that’s a fair test. I practiced that like 200 times. Do you have any other ways to check?”

The only other way that had any merit was to injure someone and see how fast it heals. I didn’t want to mention it as even a possibility because Jeremy had a minor history of getting injured deliberately, so I didn’t want to upset him. 

“Not any good ways.”

“Darn.”

We laid on my bed for a while, enjoying each other's company. Eventually, Jeremy leaned over and continued the kiss I had ended earlier. I cut it short and began to talk about the project I had been working on yesterday.

He was clearly disappointed and probably a bit insecure because I kept pulling away, but I was more anxious for myself than him.

I knew every time we made out, he wanted to go further, but I didn’t. Well, it’s not that I absolutely didn’t want to, but there were way too many factors that psyched me out any time we got close. I was worried that he wouldn’t enjoy it, or he would decide that I’m ugly, or he would come to his senses and stop dating me, and I didn’t want that to happen.

But anyway, Jeremy was on board with my idea. I showed him how to use the tools I developed and then needed to get measurements so I could make a suit. 

I grabbed a tape measure from my sewing kit.

“Hey, I need to measure you.”

“OK,” he said, pulling off his shirt and winking, “It’s for more accurate measurements.”

“I’m sure.”

We had seen each other change and such, but this was the first time he was deliberately shirtless in front of me, which meant it was the first time I got to stare at him being shirtless in front of me. 

I measured him and took the numbers down on a sticky note, but I was distracted the entire time. I kept looking away from him while I was working. 

Sitting down on the bed once I finished, I wrote some notes on the sticky.

“Mikey?”

I looked up at him. He had grabbed his shirt and had moved to sit down next to me. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you still want to date me?”

I swallowed.

“Why are you asking?”

“You act like you don’t really want to kiss me, especially the past few days. So, do you still want to date me?”

“Yes?”

“You said that like it was a question.”

He looked at me expectantly. 

“I don’t know! Yes, I want to date you, but I don’t know if I want to do everything that comes with dating.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked a little nervous like he thought I wanted to break up with him. 

I took a deep breath. Jeremy was my best friend, so I could tell him anything. 

“I just need to… slow down? You keep escalating kisses and I don’t think I want that.”

Realization dawned on his face. 

“So you don’t want to have sex with me.”

“Sort of. Yeah. It’s not that I don’t… I don’t want to be naked around you...”

He laughed a little and brushed some hair out of my face.

“That’s not really an issue Michael. You don’t have to worry. I won’t push you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

His eyes were full of sincerity and he grabbed my hand, holding it softly. 

“Thanks.”

“Of course, Mikey.”

He smiled at me and kissed my forehead gently.

Now that I had established my boundary, I felt a little more comfortable to touch him.

“Great. Cause I need a few more measurements besides just your waist.”

\---------------------------

The next day at school I was paranoid that I was constantly being controlled. I texted Jeremy every time my thoughts started to seem weird, which was about every two seconds. He somehow didn’t get annoyed with me doing that. None of my teachers wanted to do anything because it was a Friday, so I was able to text for most of the day. 

Sometime while I’d been making a decoy suit for him, Jeremy and I decided that we should probably let our friends know we’d been dating for several months. They were upset that we didn’t tell them, and a little angry at themselves for not noticing. When I mentioned that Jeremy and I had been dating, Jake shot me a look.

JD: You could have told me in the Bathroom? Or Monday?

Me: Jeremy didn’t want people to know. It wouldn’t have been my place.

Me: Besides, anyone who doesn’t use Green as Science can’t be trusted. Subject colors are more accurate than zodiacs!

JD: :p

I went to work after school and on Saturday morning and had no problems at all either day. I slept over at Jeremy’s house on Saturday and Mr. Heere and I had a very awkward conversation about his rules for me dating his son. Other than that, we had a nice time and Mr. Heere was mostly supportive about us dating, and surprisingly chill about us not telling him.   


"I understand," he'd said, "It's different than if one of you were a girl."

Dad of the year.

Sunday afternoon, Jake and I met up at the mall for me to help him “woo” Rich. Rich’s birthday was the following Friday, and Jake wanted to get him a good present. Rich had told me a lot about himself when he was in the hospital, probably because the medicine made it all come out. He would also swing by whenever I had shifted at the salon and mention things while he was there, usually shopping for his mother.

I knew that: he really liked softer things on his skin, he wanted some nail polish just to try out, his favorite color was yellow, he liked a specific brand of chocolate, his favorite flower was a sunflower, and he preferred the orange tic-tacs over any other kind you could get at the store, but he also loved the coca-cola ones that weren’t widely available yet.

I’d actually had my mom order a bunch to stock the salon cash register with, but they hadn’t come in yet. 

I didn’t tell Jake about the nail polish thing, not that I thought he’d be weirded out but because I had nail polish to give him, but everything else I told him. We -or Jake, really- ended up getting Rich a nice yellow blanket that was really soft, a bunch of all orange tic-tacs and Jake was going to pick up a sunflower at the grocery store Friday morning. 

Sunday night was great. My mother finalized a date for their wedding as sometime in August and Jeremy came over and the two of us made dinner. Jeremy was a horrible cook but we always had fun together, and he was getting better.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday passed without too much happening. Christine sat with us at Lunch on Monday because Chloe had been spreading rumors about her, but no huge event otherwise. We all adjusted to the new addition pretty fast and moved on with our lives. 

Thursday was when things got dangerous. I kept pulling myself away from Jeremy all day because I thought it was a good idea. I texted him once or twice during calc, and I think that's where I went wrong. Jenna must have realized what was up and started working harder to keep me under her control. At the end of the day, he pulled me into a janitor's closet and just gave me a look. I gave him a small smile and kissed him as an apology, but when we were about to open the door, we heard Jenna and Chloe talking again. Apparently right outside this closet was where they had all of their important conversations. 

Chloe said something about getting me after school the next day and that “Debby” had said they needed to act now. Jenna agreed and they ran off. 

Jeremy and I told my mothers as soon as we got home and the best plan was just for me to give Jeremy the suit I had made for him and hoped he didn’t need to use it. 

\---------------------------

“Michael?”

Jake sat next to me in the library. It was the very beginning of lunch and Rich and Jeremy hadn’t shown up yet. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I should ask Rich out today?”

I thought about it. If they went on a date, that would probably ensure that neither of them were on campus if something went down later. There was a small chance that Rich would say no, but it was really small. 

“Definitely!”

“Really?”

He seemed surprised like he didn’t think I would cheer him on. Sometimes I wonder how bad his friends were when Rich had his SQUIP.

“Yes! Go for it,” I said.

Rich, Jeremy, and Christine came and sat down with us. Jake scooted away from me so that he could sit next to Rich and Jeremy gave me a look. 

Lunch was chill. Everyone except Jake had given Rich their presents for him in the morning and we discussed plans to go out and celebrate at the mall tomorrow. 

The rest of the day passed without any serious trouble. At the end of the day, Jeremy and I sat in his car quietly watching Jake’s car. When he and Rich got there, we saw him hand rich the gift bag and the flower and say something to him. Rich nodded and they both got in the car and drove away.

“So I guess Rich said ‘Yes.’”

“Must have.”

“Babe, I have to go do test corrections for Mr. Taylor. Are you going to be ok waiting by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine Jer-bear. I’m not completely defenseless.”

He smiled and we both got out of his car. I went to the library to get my homework done and when I finished I texted Jeremy. I leaned back in my chair and just relaxed on my phone for a couple of minutes. 

At 4:15, I started heading out to the calc trailer, knowing that Mr. Taylor normally left around 4. I didn’t see Jeremy and he hadn’t responded to my text. 

When I called him, I got no answer. I’d texted him upwards of ten times, but I got no reply. His car was still in the parking lot and I was really worried at this point. I still couldn’t contact him but I had to get home by five. I texted him saying I was going to walk home and hoped he responded soon. 

I didn’t get very far before I got paranoid. I heard footsteps behind me, but when I turned no one was there. I had made it to a small pond that marked the halfway point before I was sure someone was following me. 

I started to run, trying to avoid my stalker when I tripped over a small wire strung between two trees. I felt two sets of hands grab me and I struggled and tried to break out of their grasp, but they’re grip held. 

They dragged me over to the side of the pond. Chloe and Jenna came out from some trees carrying a passed out Jeremy. A third person came from behind the trees. I squinted to see if I could tell who they were and it was Jeremy’s mom.

I guess it made sense, her name was  _ Debby _ .

“Hello, Michael. It’s been a while.”

I didn’t respond. 

“You may be wondering what we’re doing out here. Well, I’d feel bad if you were to die without understanding the reasons behind it. I’m sure you already know that you two have been getting in our way, but why would a teenager be a nuisance?”

She laughed as though to imply teenagers were  _ always _ a nuisance. 

“The Hurricane is giving people hope, and hope will get in the way of our operation. Had you two just waited two more years before playing hero, everyone could have walked away happy. But you brought hope to a hopeless New York after we ditched the Photon. Now I have to get rid of you and my son, but how can I incapacitate such a high profile superhero?

“You see, Chloe can freeze water. It’s rarely useful, unless you’re fighting an opponent who can control water but not ice. I was going to have Jenna make you jump in, but this seems like a more entertaining option. What we’re going to do is throw you two in, freeze the top several feet and then leave. It’s supposed to get below freezing and snow tonight, so no one will know where to look for you. It’s perfect. I get rid of my greatest opponent and my son’s trashy boyfriend in one go!”

Trashy?

My boyfriend's mother not liking me was far from my biggest problem though. I didn’t have time to deal with any of it, but they clearly still thought that Jeremy was the hurricane and not me.

“You’ll just kill me, he can breathe underwater,” I said.

“That’s where I come in. I have a very special ability Michael.” She spoke to me like I was a kindergartener asking a stupid question. “I can stop people from using their powers. I just have to sit here for a few minutes while he drowns and then you’ll be unable to escape.”

“You’re just going to kill your own son?”

She smiled at me as she waved to Jenna and the men carrying me to start throwing us in the water.

“Yes, I am.”

The men tossed us in water with a SPLASH. Chloe raised her arms, freezing over the top of the pond just as we sunk below the surface. I tried breaking the ice but it was too strong. We were completely trapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave any suggestions, criticisms, comments, or questions in the comments and I will definitely look at them, (and answer if its a question). this was a long eventful chapter so hopefully it holds you over until the next upload in a month. probably not a month but close. hope y'all enjoyed!


	15. Chapter 15

As the layer of ice above us began thickening, I knew that I had to get us both away from it before it froze us in place. I tried making the water around me move to propel us downward, but couldn’t. 

Deborah really was blocking my powers. 

I’d have to do it the old fashioned way, then. 

Reaching out, I grabbed Jeremy’s arm and began swimming down with him. I knew I didn’t have long to get us away from the ice. But once I did, I didn’t have a plan. My lungs began to burn and scream for me to breathe. And I had only swum a few feet down. We were barely halfway down. I doubted it was safe for me to stop.

Pressing forward, I swam as far down as I could before checking to see if Jeremy was ok. He wasn’t breathing but that was as much of a good thing as a bad thing underwater. 

The lake was only about 50 feet deep and I could now see the bottom. 

My lungs were unable to take it anymore and forced me to take a breath. I closed my eyes expecting it to be the last breath I ever took.

Inhaling, my lungs filled with water, but I didn’t choke. I exhaled, able to think clearly now that I had oxygen. We must have swum out of Debby’s range for her powers. Or she had assumed we died by now and had left. 

The latter would probably make things simpler.

I created an air bubble on the lake floor and pulled Jeremy the last few feet to the bottom. He was now breathing softly but wasn’t conscious.

When I checked his pulse, it was weak. 

I gently shook him to wake him up, and he did, which was a relief. He seemed dazed and coughed a little, meaning he’d need medical attention when we got out. 

“Take shallow slow breaths,” I said, “We only have a little oxygen down here.”

The lake didn’t have much vegetation and the ice was blocking any extra oxygen from dissolving. While I could breathe the lake water and let Jeremy have all the air, that should remain a last case scenario. Breathing the lake water felt like breathing the air next to a dumpster.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, letting me know that it was 5 O’clock exactly. I was supposed to have dinner with my moms and my grandparents… They’d be so disappointed that I missed it.

I was relieved to find it still turned on and shocked that the touch screen worked too. There was no service, but Jeremy and I could type out messages to each other so we didn’t waste oxygen. 

Him: what happened?

I gave him the rundown of everything I knew had happened since we’d split off two hours earlier.

Him: my mom’s enhanced… I guess it makes sense that she wanted an official divorce from my dad if she was planning on trying to kill me. 

Me: yeah…

We sat there for a while passing my phone back and forth, mostly trying to kill time until we either suffocated or someone found us. 

At around 6, the sun was hidden behind a cloud and the little light that had been filtering to the bottom of the lake was gone. The water became frigid and Jeremy started to shiver. I pushed myself into his lap and wrapped my arms around him to keep warm.

A half-hour later, the wind began to howl and snow built up against the ice covering the pond. There was a loud CRACK and a THUD as what must have been a tree fell against the ice.

Jer grabbed my phone and typed out a message.

“We’re gonna die. Aren’t we?” it read.

I grimaced and nodded.

As the Hurricane, I was supposed to be strong. I was trying to keep up a brave face for Jeremy, but I was terrified. We were gonna die. Deborah had called it, I couldn’t control ice. I had lost to a villain who monologues. 

Both my mothers and Jeremy’s dad would have noticed that we were missing. I’m sure they then figured out that neither of our phones were receiving texts. I was supposed to be home to have dinner to discuss wedding planning and Jeremy was going shopping with his dad tonight, although I guess neither of those things were going to happen. 

It kept getting colder and colder and darker and darker in the lake. Both from the incoming storm and from the sun setting. 

At around 8:00, voices approached the lake. The voices got clearer and clearer until I could almost make out what they were saying but they stopped talking before they were close enough to the pond. Then I heard my mom’s voice.

“This is Micheal’s backpack!” she said, her voice full of concern.

“That’s Jeremy’s over there.” another voice said, I think it was Jeremy’s dad.

“This lake shouldn’t be frozen over yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if what you said about the two of them being in danger was true.” a third voice that sounded like Mr. Reyes 

“You’re right! It hasn’t been below freezing for all that long. Do you think you can melt it?”

“I haven’t used my powers in a long time, Maria, but I’ll try.” Mr. Reyes said. 

I wouldn’t have guessed that he was Enhanced.

They all fell silent and the top of the lake got very bright, as though pure light was hitting it. Jeremy and I shielded our eyes and felt the water heat up around us. 

The light gently faded and revealed that the ice at the top was mostly gone. Only a few large pieces remained floating around. I grabbed Jeremy’s hand, gave him one last chance to take a deep breath, and swam to the top. 

Jeremy and I swam to the shore of the lake where our parents were waiting. 

“What the hell happened?” my mamá asked as soon as we were standing on the shore. 

We caught them up and they all looked pissed. Mr. Reyes stood to the side watching. When we finished Mr. Heere looked at him.

“I guess you were right John. She is Enhanced.”

Jeremy and I shared a confused look. 

“John - or Mr. Reyes as you should call him - is the Photon. When you first became the Hurricane he tried to find out your identity. He came to me thinking that Jeremy was the Hurricane,” Mr. Heere said.

“Obviously he was wrong, but he warned me that whoever you were, you were in danger as there was a supervillain who could stop others from using their powers. We followed you as the Hurricane for a few days to see if you really were Jeremy, and found out your real identity,” He finished.

“After a while, they contacted us. They wanted to make sure we knew what you were doing and if we did know, they wanted to make sure that we knew we could trust them. We decided not to tell you because the fewer people who knew who was involved, the safer everyone would be.

“We knew you’d be mad, but that you would understand in the end. Since then, the four of us have kept in touch about what's been going on. John proposed a theory a few years ago the Debby was the Enhanced and apparently it was true,” My mom said.

The snow had started to pick up and I barely caught her last sentence as it was freezing and I was dripping wet. It was clear that Jeremy was feeling the same way as he was shuddering with every gust of wind. 

“Maybe we should finish this conversation later, the boys are practically hypothermic!” Mamá came to our aid. 

We walked home, Jeremy and I shivering the entire way. When we got to our house, the adults sent Jeremy and me upstairs to change into warm clothes and they made a plan for dinner. We all sat on the couch once Jeremy and I had changed and they finished telling us about their secret alliance. 

I fell asleep next to Jeremy on the couch after a few minutes of talking. I felt him stand up and walk away at one point and then come back and sit down next to me at another. Mostly asleep, I sought out his hand with my own and held it for a while. 

They woke me up to eat dinner but I was too tired to really recognize what I was eating. They sent me to bed after dinner and said they’d catch me up on whatever plan they had in the morning. I was asleep the second my head hit the pillow.

I was dreaming again. I was at the mall. Jeremy, Christine, Brooke, and I were hiding in a corner. There was fire all around us. Jeremy’s mom was there and so was the Pyro, Tanner Williams, Chloe, and Jenna. I didn’t have my suit. 

It was almost the exact same scene as my last dream except for the fact that it was at the mall and not in the school auditorium. I was unable to use my abilities but I had the EMP and water system I had built for Jeremy in my hands. The Pyro shot a burst of flames towards us in the corner right as my dream changed. 

I was in New York City with a child again. The kid seemed nervous this time and the street was completely deserted. We walked into a building before it started to snow and got into an elevator. When we got out, we glanced out the window in the hallway and saw that the street was covered in snow up to at least the third story of every building on the entire block. I handed the child a set of keys and he ran off to some door. 

I woke up. This time I was more prepared for a dream and the me in the dream was more prepared for what would happen. It was less of a nightmare than last time, but it was still a little alarming. 

Jeremy was laying next to me on the bed. His eyes were open and full of concern.

“You OK Mikey?” He asked.

“Sort of. I don’t know, actually.”

I told him about my dream. 

“You said last time you were in the auditorium when my mom and the pyro were there. Also, weren’t you in your suit in your last dream when we were trapped underwater?”

He wasn’t interrogating, his voice was gentle like he was just reminding me.

“Yeah, but the first part of my dream was somewhat accurate…” I trailed off, deep in thought. “I think that in the time between my first dream and today I changed the future. I did something different than what I was going to and that changed the way everything played out.” 

“That’s… So weird. At least we know there’s a good chance you’ll be attacked at the mall?” He said

“At least there’s that.” My voice shook as I spoke.

He sat up and pulled me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me. He whispered something in my ear that sounded soothing. I watched the minutes go by on my alarm clock just enjoying the feeling of his chest against my back.

“Mikey?” He whispered in my ear.

“Yeah Jer-Bear?”

“What if I am Enhanced?”

“Like your mom?”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t know. It’s not impossible, babe. There isn’t all that much research about children of Enhanced. Or Enhanced in general,” I said.

“Why not?”

“A lot of Enhanced don’t live long enough to have kids,” I replied gently.

“Oh,” He said, “But you think it’s possible?”

“Yeah. if it can happen as a random person without Enhanced parents it only makes sense for it to be more common in those with Enhanced parents.”

He pressed his chin against my shoulder and breathed quietly against my ear for a while. 

“Do you want to try? I’m assuming you think you’d have the same powers as your mother,” I broke the comfortable silence.

“Could we?”

“Yeah.” I laughed.

I held my hands out in front of me, concentrating. I made a small but constant spark hold between them. He leaned in, pushing himself tighter against my back. 

We were completely silent, the only sound in the room was the tick-tock of my clock. I felt his eyelashes against my cheek as he closed his eyes. I saw my spark starting to waver. I focused more, trying to make it stronger but I couldn’t.

It felt like someone was holding a pillow against my face so I couldn’t breathe. After a few more seconds of me struggling, the spark completely disappeared.

“Why’d you stop?” He asked.

I replied with breaking my focus.

“I didn’t, you stopped me.”

I heard him laugh softly and then all of a sudden the pillow was gone, while I was still concentrating on trying to get my spark to come back. In an instant, all the lights flashed on before quickly going out and I felt Jeremy flinch.

“Sh*t! Are you OK? Did I shock you?”

He leaned back against me.

“Just a little. I'm fine. I’ll be sure to warn you next time.”

I kissed his cheek.

“We should probably get some sleep.”

He pulled me tighter against him and we laid back down in my bed.

The next morning my moms caught me up on our plan. Jeremy and I would act like nothing happened yesterday and go about our business as usual. 

We wouldn’t seek out trouble but we wouldn’t hide from it either. This way we got it over with as soon as possible, without deliberately putting us in danger. 

That felt wrong. Debby and her terrorist goonies could be hurting people, and I should be helping them. Instead, I was making out with my boyfriend and baking cookies with my mom.

Around noon, Jeremy and I headed to the mall to meet up with our friends. I grabbed the devices I had made Jeremy and put them in my pocket, just in case. 

It was nice. Rich was smiling the entire time and his lisp slipped out a lot, but he didn’t try to cover it up like he usually did. He and Jake had gotten together last night, but they didn’t really want anyone to know yet, so they only told me. 

The day went by quickly, and since both Rich and Jake “had to be home by 4,” they left before the rest of us did. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to be home and just wanted to hook up, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

Jer and I were about to leave when Brooke stopped and looked through all her pockets. She dumped her purse on a mall bench.

“Sh*t,” she said, “I lost my phone.”

We stayed to help her look, and the four of us retraced our steps all around the mall. Finally, we decided to check the food court where we had grabbed lunch before giving up. 

I ducked behind a table with Jeremy to check when I heard Chloe’s voice.

“Looking for this?” She asked.

I stood up. She was holding Brooke’s phone above her head. 

“What do you want, Chloe?” Christine asked.

Chloe handed the phone to Brooke. 

“Nothing.”

She said the word as though it was final, but she didn’t move. 

Three more people came into the food court and stood next to her. We were completely trapped. The fire alarm went off, and the last few stragglers in the food court left. 

Jenna, Tanner Williams, and Jeremy’s mom stood next to Chloe, the Pyro coming up behind them and joining their line. At this point, the girls were next to us behind the table.

“What’s going on?” 

Brooke’s voice shook.

“Let them leave,” Jeremy spoke directly to his mom.

She smiled.

“I don’t think I will. Not until the Hurricane shows up, at least.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment any suggestions, questions, criticisms, or just plain comments.


	16. Chapter 16

The Pyro released a stream of fire to the walls, setting them ablaze. He sent more fire our way, matching the scene from my dream. Smoke filled the air as the walls began to burn, making the whole room hazy.

With the amount of smoke and heat in the room, the sprinklers should have gone off. I could sense some water in them, but there was something blocking it from getting out. Based on the powers of the Enhanced in front of me, it was probably ice.

Before I could pull water down from the pipes or from the fountain, it became harder to breathe. The effects of Debby Heere’s powers combined with the smoke made my head swim. 

The fire began creeping toward us, guided by the Pyro. Brooke and Christine hid behind me.

“Get them out,” I muttered to Jeremy.

I reached into my pocket, grabbing the EMP. I couldn’t turn invisible, summon lighting, or attack with water, but I wasn’t completely defenseless. I activated the EMP and with a ZAP the lights in the room exploded. Bits of lightbulbs were sent flying and the room plunged into darkness. The only light sources were the fire and the faint glow coming in through the skylight. But that was getting dimmer by the second due to an incoming storm.

I couldn’t see them, but they couldn’t see me either. Jeremy and the girls pulled away from me, and I ran in the opposite direction from them. They still thought Jeremy was the Hurricane, but in the dark, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“How did he do that?” Chloe asked, her voice edged with… Fear?

Once I reached the fountain, I got an idea. If Chloe was nervous after me just making the lights turn off, they clearly hadn’t expected me to put up much of a fight. I gabbed the water pressurizer and hose I had made from my pocket. 

It could be controlled remotely, plus it would be imperceivable in the dark. I could convince them I was more powerful than Debby.

After setting up my device, I ran away.

The Pyro began setting more things on fire, bringing light to the room. Jeremy hadn’t gotten the girls out yet, and if he kept setting things on fire, the Pyro would see that too.

I thumbed the remote in my pocket. Raising my left hand, I began spraying water at the fire. The Pyro retaliated and set a table that my friends were hiding behind on fire. 

Brooke screamed and momentarily Debby’s hold over my powers loosened. I summoned the water from the sprinklers and the fountain and blocked the flame from hitting Brooke. Pulling the water back towards me, I put out what fire remained. 

The room was now in total darkness. The storm had arrived and the rain was now pouring against the skylight. 

“You idiots!” Jeremy’s mom yelled, “the Hurricane was Michael, not Jeremy. They look nothing alike!”

I stifled a laugh, not wanting to give away my location. Chloe had seen both the Hurricane and Jeremy when Madeline first attacked back in January. I’m surprised they ever thought it was Jeremy.

Concentrating on the clouds above me, I pulled the water through the skylight, causing it to shatter. In that same instant, I pulled the water towards Debby’s voice and electrified it. There was a loud Splash followed by a scream and I knew I hit my mark. 

From the lack of a fiery response, I guessed that I had taken down the Pyro too.

I had emptied the fountain. My device wouldn’t work anymore, but it didn’t matter. My biggest opponents were down and my friends had escaped. 

Chloe, Jenna, and Tanner wouldn’t be easy, but I could do it.

I turned invisible and began to move, looking for an angle to attack from.

The ground beneath me grew cold and I felt my grasp on the water slip. Chloe was freezing the water. I ran - or more accurately, slid -over to her. I didn’t really have a plan for how to to take the rest of them out of the equation, but by freezing the floor, she had made it easy for me, because I now had the power of electricity on my side. 

I heard police sirens in the distance.

I concentrated on the storm clouds in the now exposed sky and the wiring in the walls of the building. Once I could feel the storm, I focused the energy that surrounded me and shot a shock straight at Chloe, disabling her. 

In doing so, I had given away my position to Jenna and Tanner. I moved out of the way of Tanner who splashed some poisonous acid at me but was not able to avoid Jenna. 

Thought filled my head. How to breathe, how to blink how to move. Step after step. I thought about becoming visible, walking towards Jenna and Tanner, and sitting down on the ground in front of them. I was halfway to the floor before I heard Jeremy scream.

“Don’t be f*cking stupid Michael.”

It was enough to snap me out of it. I turned invisible again and just closed my eyes, not thinking, just feeling. I heard Tanner shift and I jumped to the side, feeling something liquid move past the space I had been standing in moments earlier. 

I sent a bolt of electricity his way. Opening my eyes for just a millisecond and I saw that I had hit him, knocking him out. 

I saw Jeremy standing alone in the corner now. He must have come back in after helping the girls escape.

With a SLAM, the police entered the building, slowly checking each room between the entrance and here. I ran and grabbed Jeremy’s hand, running out through the loading dock door. We held the door shut behind us, trying to prevent Jenna from escaping. 

I heard the police enter the restaurant behind the door. They shouted something and I heard the clinking of metal. I looked at Jeremy, whispering softly I asked him:

“Are you blocking her powers?”

“Do I need to? It’s not like the police think most of the time!” he replied.

I laughed and pulled him away. It was clear that the Hurricane had been there and if the police found us behind that door, they’d have to assume he was one of us. 

We ran around the building to the parking lot where he had parked his car. Brooke and Christine were waiting there for us, looking both confused and pissed off.

“You two have some explaining to do,” Brooke said.

“Michael’s the Hurricane, those were Enhanced terrorists. Don’t tell anyone,” Jeremy stated plainly.

“More than that!”

“There isn’t much more than that!”

I stepped in, explaining the situation that’s been going on the past few months and how I’ve been the Hurricane for a couple of years. Once we actually told them, they were understanding and swore not to tell anyone. 

We stuck around long enough to make sure that Jeremy’s Mom and crew were arrested. Then, Jeremy took me home and went to do the shopping his dad was gonna do with him yesterday.

My moms and Mr. Reyes were waiting for me when I got through the door. 

“We saw what happened on the news, are you okay?” my mom asked.

They made sure I was okay and then quickly switched topics.

“We’ve been thinking,” mamá started, “that maybe it’s best for the Hurricane to retire. Mr. Reyes is in a good position to take over. The Hurricane had a purpose, but now someone more responsible can fill that role.”

My heart sank. I knew she was right, but it still hurt.

“I guess that works,” I said, before excusing myself from the conversation.

Mr. Reyes and I spent some time creating a new suit for him, with newer technology so he could keep up with the villains and the other superheroes. Then, over the course of a few weeks, the Photon returned and the Hurricane slowly disappeared. 

People noticed. There were goodbye messages to the Hurricane everywhere. But New York was safe, so I could retire in peace.

The following Monday, all anyone could talk about in school was the attack. No one knew the four of us were there, so there weren’t rumors circling about Brooke, Christine, and me, but there were still rumors about Jeremy.

“Hey dude,” Jake said to him as he sat down for lunch, “you okay? Like with your mom and stuff?”

Jeremy nodded quietly. Most people believed that he was Enhanced and working for his mom. Which was half right - but still, it hurt him that everyone believed he was a terrorist. 

When Jer went to the bathroom a few minutes later, Rich pulled a notebook out of his backpack.

“Okay guys,” he said, “were any of you with Jeremy during the attack at the mall?”

Christine and Brooke’s eyes widened and they looked at me. I shrugged.

“No,” I said, wanting to see where he was going.

He took a deep breath and dramatically flipped pages in his notebook.

“Back in January when Madeline attacked during advisory, no one saw the Hurricane, right? So he was probably someone in the room, and he’s pretty tall, so it's either Jeremy or Jake.

“When Dustin attacked the auditorium, Jeremy was the person who called the police to the scene, and he was one of a few students not in the room. Plus, when the Hurricane dropped onto the stage as we were leaving, I got a look at his leg. It was super white, and Jeremy is pale as fuck,” Rich said.

I had a large vitiligo spot on my ankle, probably what Rich was talking about.

“That doesn’t prove anything, Rich.” Brooke rolled her eyes, and then shot a look in my direction.

“Right,” Jake said, “but like last Monday, I heard Chloe and Jenna talking. I thought I was going crazy because there was no way they were terrorists, but they mentioned Jeremy being the Hurricane. That’s pretty much proof.”

Right then, Jeremy came back from the bathroom.

“What are you guys talking about?” He asked, sitting down awkwardly.

“Oh they think you’re the Hurricane,” I said at the same time Rich and Jake said, “nothing.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He laughed.

Rich and Jake shared a look, and Rich seemed to gain confidence.

“How so?”

“Jeremy was in the same room as the Hurricane when Madeline attacked the Mall. You should know, you were there.” I butted in. “and, the Hurricane is more 5’9” while Jeremy’s closer to 6’.”

“Oh.”

I leaned my head against Jeremy and looked at the girls. They were clearly struggling not to laugh. I’d decided Monday morning to tell Jake and Rich, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to fuck with them a little.

“Wait,” Jake said, “how the fuck would you know that?”

I laughed and just stared at them.

“Are you…? No fucking way.” Rich balled his hand into a fist.

Jeremy and I told Rich and Jake everything. They were less understanding than the girls, but they promised not to tell anyone. 

After a few days, they accepted it and would not stop asking questions. It was fun at first, but once they started asking if I could control water inside of living things, I told them to cut it out. I did not need any ideas.

The trial for the terrorists started a few weeks after they were arrested. Normally, Enhanced terrorists were just sent to prison with no due process, but two “supervillains” pressured a couple congressmen from New York to get a bill through congress that forced all cases involving Enhanced to go through the court system before any sentencing. 

It was weird for my last act as the Hurricane to technically be that of a villain and not a hero, but it helped so many people that it just seemed right.

Jeremy’s Mother got life in prison, as did the Pyro. But Tanner, Jenna, and Chloe were only sentenced to 30 years with a chance for parole. Which was generous, but maybe they’d use their time to better themselves? 

As the end of Junior year approached, I started feeling really weird. In the past school was always something I just did between opportunities to be the Hurricane. Now, it was what my life revolved around. Somehow, my future always had the Hurricane in it, but now that wasn’t so certain. I was a civilian.

And it felt good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all enjoyed everything! Comment any feedback or questions y'all have. I really enjoyed writing this book and I really appreciate you all reading any part of it.


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five years after the Photon returned and the Hurricane disappeared, a group of students are preforming an experiment to see if the Enhanced's powers can be used medicinally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your opinions. I've decided to keep plot generally the same, but I've rewritten to (hopefully) make some parts less cringy and improve spelling and grammar mistakes. I also added more onomatopoeias to make it more comic book-y.
> 
> I've Edited chapters 1-5, and rewritten the Dustin, New York, Pond, and Final fight scenes as well as adding new scenes and rewrote a few random old ones to make the whole thing more cohesive and to make some characters vibe better.
> 
> Felt bad about teasing with the survey, so here's an actual epilogue.
> 
> (you have no idea how hard it was for me to spell epilogue)

As the group of Ph.D. students worked frantically to hit their deadline, the storm outside grew stronger. They were studying replication and medicinal use of Enhanced genetic material. 

Their goal was to replicate enough of the DNA of an Enhanced and test to see if the Enhanced abilities were still present in a blood-like mixture with DNA. Later, they would test to see if a non-enhanced human could reap the benefits of that ability from taking the mixture as medicine.

“Professor Williams?” one student asked, “who’s blood is this? Like which superhero?”

“You wouldn’t know them. They went underground years ago, way before any of you guys moved to New York. That’s why the blood is so old,” the professor replied.

The student nodded and got back to work. They had the right amount of material to begin the experiments.

The team began exposing their samples to various traumatic scenarios. One sample was placed in a -100 C freezing, another over a bunsen burner, another exposed to x-rays, another was mixed with acid. 

A loud clap of thunder caused several of the students to jump. The power began to flicker on and off, which would interfere with the experiment. The professor stood and left the room to find a custodian to ensure his work could continue.

Once the professor had left, the students began chattering amongst themselves.

“I don’t feel like this is a good idea. Like this_ could _be used to help people. But it could also be used to seriously hurt the reputation of the Enhanced.”

“Of Enhanced people,” one student corrected, “but I see you’re point. Like if this was a healing superhero, I could understand. But this superhero's power is literally surviving trauma. That's so fucked up. This whole thing just seems wrong somehow…”

Before the students could continue their conversation, a timer went off, signaling to the students that they needed to remove their samples from their environments and allow them to return to a normal state. 

They allowed to frozen sample to thaw, the heated sample to cool, and neutralized the acid in the final sample. 

The samples exposed to radiation were first tested. Since there was no radioactive isotope ionizing the sample, there shouldn’t be residual radiation from exposure. When tested, 4 of the 5 samples appeared to be releasing x-rays.

The students documented that and moved on.

When the formerly frozen samples were placed in water, the water froze. When the heated samples were placed in water, the water boiled. When the formerly acidic sample was placed in water, the PH rapidly decreased. 

The professor returned shortly after the students had tested their final sample. The storm was still raging outside, but the buildings back up generator was running fine. 

“These results are good,” the professor said, reading one student's notebook. “I think we can move on to testing in live subjects.”

“But sir! We haven’t replicated results yet. We don’t even have a control group. The review board still hasn’t given us permission to move beyond replicating the genetic code, let alone testing in animals,” one student object.

The professor began to set up a series of test tubes and pulled out a box of syringes.

“Where are the lab rats?” another student asked quietly. 

The professor turned around smiling with a syringe full of blood in his hand. Two women entered the room, each of them blocking one of the room’s doors, leaving no exits for the students.

“We won’t need lab rats. Now, you can either participate or die painfully.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this after rewriting. starting work on the next book soon. I'm going to be a senior and I'm in all AP and DE classes with no study hall, so I won't have a ton of time to write so I'm trying to finish the second book by September. That being said, I'll have four day school weeks because of COVID and will only actually be at school two of those days, so maybe more time than I'm expecting. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the book :)


End file.
